Gianni Vattimo, reading the
Signs of Time
By
Frits de Lange
In
1996 the
What
makes a postmodernist philosopher, soaked in the nihilism of Nietzsche and
Heidegger, return to the religious sources of his youth in such an unguarded
way? Did Vattimo lose his critical rationality? Are
we witnessing in this regression to the certainties of early childhood a forgivable
weakness, caused by some personal crisis (Vattimo
mentions the death of a good friend), which we should not give too much
philosophical and theological weight? Or must we look for another explanation,
one that would perhaps announce the end of Gianni Vattimo
as a philosopher, but takes the event far more seriously: did Vattimo meet his
I
suggest that none of the explanations above will do. A careful reading of I
believe that I believe shows that Vattimo¡¯s
profound concern with the Christian tradition has already been explained in terms
of the philosophical concept of weak thinking, which he has developed in his
previous work. Important themes that make up this concept, the end of
metaphysics, the death of God, the nihilistic vocation of philosophy,
hermeneutics and
violence etc. are used as a framework in which Vattimo
situates his renewed concern with Christianity. The thinking of Nietzsche and
Heidegger has played a decisive role in providing the basic grammar for his
earlier philosophy; in this religious essay their presence is no less dominant.
On the
other hand one must admit: there really is something new in Vattimo¡¯s
later work, culminating in Credere di credere. I will deal with
later. With the emphasis Vattimo puts on the
theological concept of kenosis (and
the intrinsic secularisation grafted onto it) his thinking undergoes a
remarkable shift. His initial philosophical reading of the history of Western
metaphysics is now explicitly recognised as a transcription of the original
Christian doctrine of the incarnation of the Son of God. (GG 25,29) Vattimo uses the concept of kenosis as the hermeneutical key to the
interpretation of the Christian legacy, inextricably interwoven with the
history of Western philosophy. This history can even be partially described as
the history of onto-theology. But slowly and surely the story of the
incarnation has weakened and eroded the hard structures of ontology of which
God the Father still was the all-integrating centre. Vattimo
suggests a causal relationship between the Christian narrative of kenosis and philosophical nihilism. In
the end the history of metaphysics can only be explained in religious terms.
(MVS, 103)[1] The
consequence of the gospel is nihilism .
This
perspective on history opens up the possibility of a genuine theological perspective on contemporary
philosophy and its precedents in Vattimo¡¯s
work. A way of reading the signs of the time in terms of the Christian faith.
In his critical use of distinctive religious language we meet Vattimo, by definition, as a theologian. Apparently, Vattimo himself acknowledges that he is the first to be surprised.
I believe that I believe was born out of a great event, a kind of decisive
discovery, he declares. (GG 29) A skilled theologian will presumably notice
that the enthusiasm of Vattimo¡¯s Entdeckungsfreude
has to compensate for a lack of theological craftsmanship. The rather bold and
unguarded way in which Vattimo interprets biblical
tradition and the theological language of caritas,
God and the incarnation, might reveal first more than second naiveté. But let
his simplicity be forgiven: what counts is that the Christian tradition seems
to be taken seriously as a main source in hermeneutical philosophy.
One
can defend - as I shall do - that Credere di credere is not an alien
element in Vattimo¡¯s work, but organically fits into it.
Nevertheless, Vattimo¡¯s own words still seem to suggest a
kind of paradigm shift in the Kuhnian sense. Does his
simultaneous religious and philosophical reading of Western history not force a
reassessment of some of the basic assumptions underlying his work? Or is
¡®Christianity¡¯ just another puzzle solved in the daily business of Vattimo¡¯s normal science: assisting the end of metaphysics? A
careful reading of his work shows that the theological turn it finally takes
was already in the making for a long time. That is the first thing I want to do
in this article, in which I offer a reconstruction of the conceptual structure
of Vattimo¡¯s thought: to show how the foundation
for his kenotic theology was already laid in his previous work.[2] Hence my
task will be primarily reconstructive.
But I¡¯ m doing this as a theologian working in the field of ethics. The
question that motivates me is, whether Vattimo¡¯s
plea for a kenotic ethics - in which his entire theology eventually seems to
concentrate itself - opens up a fruitful perspective for theological ethics. An
ethics, to be sure, which accepts the conditions of (post) modernity as a point
of departure, but which looks for distinctive contributions of the Christian
tradition to secularised morality. Vattimo considers
Nietzsche¡¯s experience
of the death of God to be fundamental and inescapable within our cultural
horizon, and at the same time upholds the conviction that nihilism ends somehow
in the arms of theology. (BI X) Should theology be glad with this newcomer, or
would it do better to maintain some critical distance, before embracing him too
tightly? I opt for the second alternative, and shall conclude with some
critical theological remarks.
The return of
religion?
Vattimos recent concern with religion could perhaps be interpreted
as a fashionable flirt. Cultural trend watchers are observing a return of
religion among Western intellectuals. A renewed openness to the sacred, born
out of disappointment with the harshness of Enlightenment rationalism. Vattimo himself acknowledges the new cultural mood in which
a diffuse religiosity, together with various kinds of fundamentalism, gets its
chance to develop. But this is not the return of religion he would like to
support. Fundamentalism must be interpreted as a reactionary flight backwards.
God is pictured as the unmoveable, a-historic foundation of being, a certainty to
counter all the insecurities of our risk society. In the eyes of Vattimo, this kind of foundational belief in God means a
return to the slavery of metaphysics. The vagueness of New Age spirituality, on
the other hand, reflects the ennui of
a saturated culture of consumption (TT 87 - 92).
However,
there are also signs of a more critical openness toward religion. Post-modern
philosophy rightly avows the dissolution of the great systems of thought,
theism included. This acknowledgement leaves room for forms of religious
thinking other than foundationalism. Especially
Heidegger - the philosopher who, according to Vattimo,
has grasped in thoughts¡¯ (in Gedanken erfasst) his own époque as Hegel once did his (TT 92) -
offers fruitful opportunities to rethink our modern situation. This situation
can be characterised both by the hegemony of science and technology, as well as
by the decline of foundational metaphysics. Against this background,
post-modern critical religiosity should be considered a positive factuality, an
event (Er-eignis) of being. It should be interpreted
creatively in terms of Heidegger¡¯s thinking of modernity as the end (in the twofold
sense of culmination and closure) of
metaphysics, and not as a polemical rejection of modernity.
In
appealing to Heidegger for an understanding of the phenomenon of post-modern
religiosity, Vattimo deliberately ignores two other
possible schemes of interpretation. First, a de-historicised
interpretation of religion that regards religion as an anthropological
constant, as an eternal and universal human quality. From that
perspective, modern secularisation is but a temporary blemish on an eternal
human characteristic. Religious doctrines and institutions may come and go,
religiosity - in whatever form - will remain forever. Not only Schleiermacher with his view of religion as ultimate
dependency, but also Vattimo¡¯s philosophical friends
The
second interpretation of religion Vattimo rejects is
the opposite of the one mentioned above. For one could also make a plea for a
radical historisation of religiosity, in a Hegelian
sense: the divine does not have a
history, but is the positivity of history itself. Though it is true, as we
shall see, that Vattimo defends a secularisation
theory analogous to the one Hegel developed (modernity as Verwindung; a concept taken from Heidegger), he does not understand Hegel¡¯s concept of Aufhebung in a
strongly reductionist sense: the absolute Spirit, who
is the basic concern of religion, being identical
with the same historical force that finally closes out the history of religion,
by replacing it through art, science and philosophy. Instead, Vattimo defends a non-reductionist
view of religion that is much more reminiscent of the late Schelling
than of Hegel. We have definitely not left behind mythical language. On the
contrary: myth, as the locus par excellence of religion, continues to be always
before us. For in myth the radical historicity of existence reveals itself,
together with the contrasting experience of what transcends it. The experience
of guilt, sin, the longing for forgiveness and wholeness, the mystery of
suffering and death: in religion we encounter the genuine expression of the
experience of the contingency of life. This experience will continue to
accompany us as long as we are human beings.
An anthropological constant, then? Indeed, only if
we look at religion formally and functionally. However, Vattimo
stresses the historicity of all experience, also of religious experience. In
terms of its structure and content our experience of religion and what we know
about it in Western culture, is mediated by the Wirkungsgeschichte of the Bible.
An apparently strictly philosophical analysis of the contingency of human
existence as that of Heidegger, e.g., in Sein und Zeit, might sound like a
phenomenological depiction of human life in general. But it was written as the
mature fruit of a conscience that recognises that it belongs (Zu-gehörigkeit)
to a specific Christian religious tradition. (TT 100)
Vattimo¡¯s
concept of religion is non-reductionist: religiosity
is a way of experiencing reality that cannot be described in terms of other
language games such as art or science. And it is definitely historical:
religion in general does not exist. In defining religion that way, Vattimo already makes a clear theological choice. He does
not want to speak of the world, human existence, God as abstract universals
and construct a natural theology. Theology cannot make metaphysical claims
about the essential structure of reality. This is the recognition of a
fundamental theological insight: in the Trinitarian Christian tradition God is
confessed as incarnated, his ¡®essence¡¯ - as one radical line in the Christian
tradition has defended – has become history. The dynamic of history is written
in the heart of Christianity, within the doctrine of God itself. The God
believed in as Father, Son and Holy Ghost cannot be seen as an eternal,
immobile Ground, underlying reality. This metaphysical God is dead. In
Nietzsche¡¯s
calling for the end of metaphysics, the history of Trinitarian theology comes
to its final destination: nihilism, as the celebration of the death of the
metaphysical God.
Heidegger and Nietzsche - metaphysics, nihilism and
technology
Vattimo¡¯s
philosophical and theological readings of the history of Western thought seem
to corroborate each other in the end. That is certainly the case in his more
recent work. However, the philosophical canon of Heidegger and Nietzsche
continues to provide the frame of reference for his entire work, despite his
recent explicit theological language. Vattimo wrote a
detailed introduction on each one of them in the 80's[3], and
continues to return to them, using the two as the matrix for his own thinking.
I want
to make a short remark on the essential role that each of them plays in Vattimo, to start with Nietzsche. Understanding the
post-modern condition means, in line with Nietzsche: the acceptance of the end
of metaphysics and the positive affirmation of nihilism as our destination and
our historical opportunity. The history of metaphysics in the west can be
defined as a way of thinking in terms of hidden, stable structures, in which
reality is grounded, experience is ordered and given sense and meaning, and
which sets standards for behaviour. This history finds its culmination in
Nietzsche¡¯s
acknowledgement that the conception of truth on which the metaphysical picture
of reality relies, has to be considered an illusion. Truth as the
correspondence between reality and human thinking is a deliberate construction,
born out of the human will to power. It is our
active grasp of reality, not nature mirroring itself reflectively in our
passive mind that lies at the bottom of our idea of truth. Truth is a
cultural construct, not an objective description of the way things really are.
The
narrative of the death of God tells the same epistemological story, but uses,
not accidentally in Vattimo¡¯s interpretation, a theological
grammar. For, as Vattimo shall emphasise in his later
work, the history of metaphysics can only be told and understood as the history
of a theistic God, who¡¯s final destiny it is to make
belief in him redundant. God is dead -
and we killed him, Nietzsche wrote in his parable of the mad man who
proclaims the death of God.[4] In his
interpretation, Vattimo considers this last addition
(we killed him) essential. We raised the metaphysical God to life by
believing in him. That is correct, but such a Feuerbachian
way of analysing religion is only half the story of theism. The history of Western belief in this God,
inextricably intertwined with the history of being itself, is not taken into
account in this approach to religion. Feuerbach just
presumed that we simply have to stop believing in God, in order to get in touch
with the real truth, things as they really are. But we did not just stop
believing in God. The narrative of the death of God is much more complex. It
tells us that thanks to (our belief in) God we were able to live. The belief in
God secured the stability and trustworthiness of reality. Within this
structured reality we finally managed to live so well that, just by living our
relatively secure lives, we eventually realised that we could do without the
theistic God. So we killed God by neglecting and abandoning
him.
Retold
in non-narrative terms, the story of the ¡®death of God¡¯ describes Western
thinking since Plato as an attempt to survive and to bring order into a chaotic
and threatening reality by means of stable thought structures, underlying our
disparate experiences. The history of metaphysics is, using a neologism
borrowed from Heidegger, the history of onto-theo-logy.
To the concept of being as first and general the Christian tradition added
the concept of God as highest and ultimate. God became the grounding ground
of being, causa
prima, ultima ratio.[5] To
Nietzsche this foundational thinking represents a kind of excessive reaction
to a state of insecurity that is no longer ours. (BI 31)
Why
don¡¯t we respond this way any longer? Why have we lost the need for
foundational thinking? Because, Vattimo points out
time after time, we have structured and secured our world with science and
technology. Science and technology represent a powerful ordering of reality
that was born out of the same situation of contingency and insecurity that lay
at the root of our belief in a providential God. But in the meantime they have
turned out to be so successful, that they have made belief in this God
superfluous. God is a too extreme hypothesis, which under the actual
conditions we are living in is no longer necessary. (EI 156) He lost his
relevance in our world, precisely because of the modifications to social life,
which in the beginning made the hypothesis God compelling. This death of God is
an experience, broadly shared by Western culture, rather than a theoretical
thesis to be defended. (MVS 86) It challenges the way we understand ourselves.
The nihilism that results after we have buried the God of theism is our
destiny. But it should not be undergone passively. On the contrary, the death
of God should be affirmed and taken up as a positive opportunity to shape our
lives freely.
The
¡®death of God¡¯ plunges our subjectivity into a severe crisis, by taking its ontological
roots away. But at the same time it opens up the possibility of a different
kind of subjectivity. The dualist metaphysical construction of a subject
anchored in an objective reality was motivated by the desire to secure the
human position in an uncertain world, a powerful grip on reality. In the midst
of disorder the knowledge of a structured reality at a safe, non-threatening
distance makes us feel at ease. This process of objectifying the world has a
specific subjectivation of the subject as its
counterpart. It is, as Nietzsche reveals, subjectivity marked by force, an
outcome of the organising will to power. Once unmasked as
ultimately driven by force, our subjectivity stands naked and defenceless.
Once enlightened by Nietzsche¡¯s genealogy of metaphysics, we will have to make
a choice: we either continue the grim poker game of power, or choose less
violent ways of being a self. Vattimo decides for the
latter. Nietzsche¡¯s Übermensch should, according to Vattimo,
be seen as a way of being that explores the possibilities of living one's life
as creative play without exerting force, an aesthetic mode of being in which
the boundaries between subject and object are no longer all that clearly
defined. Once again – an uncertain
freedom, but a promising one, beyond the prison of metaphysics.
Nietzsche
wrote his visionary account more then a century ago. But in the currently
prevailing situation of high technology Vattimo
considers Nietzsche¡¯s
prophecy to be well on its way to fulfilment. According to Vattimo,
technology - only a marginal issue with Nietzsche - plays a very important role in the
non-metaphysical restructuring of subjectivity in which we are now involved.
Philosophy should not underestimate the impact of today¡¯s high tech revolution
on the way we experience reality. Martin Heidegger – Vattimo¡¯s
second canonical thinker - is in fact the only one, who, especially in his
later work, recognised the ontological impact
of modern technology. Heidegger valued modern technology negatively for the
most part and did not foresee the revolutionary way in which current
information and communication technology would accelerate changes in our way of
being in the world. Yet he had a clear idea of how the way we technically
organise the world is intrinsically related to our understanding of being.
Vattimo reads Heidegger primarily as an interpreter of
Nietzsche. The Heidegger after the Kehre is radically thinking through the consequences of the
end of metaphysics, as perceived by Nietzsche. But already in Sein und Zeit,
Heidegger, in analogy to Nietzsche, dismantles modern subjectivity by analysing
the historicity and finiteness of human Dasein. There are no eternal, unchanging structures of being
in which we participate and which guarantee our immortality. Subjectivity is no
substance, and being is no thing among other things. There is no other being
than the being there (Dasein) which pro-jects
itself into the world. Being itself has no foundation. (EI 105, 108) The
alternative for a metaphysical foundation of subjectivity that Heidegger aims
at in Sein und Zeit,
points in the direction of a hermeneutical anthropology: a phenomenological
description of authentic existence as a way of being that does not deny, but
radically affirms its contingency and historicity.
Later
on Heidegger focuses on the ontological question with which he started. Though Da-sein (anthropology) is the only access to
being, being (ontology) still is the final mystery to which we have to open up
ourselves. The destruction of metaphysics returns us to the question of being.
Being cannot be objectified. It is not present as foundation. It is not a
stable structure, a permanent essence of reality, a fundamentum absolutum et inconcussum. (TS 42) Being is not, but it happens. (TS 73) Therefore, a non-metaphysical
anthropology does not ask for the ap-propriation,
but for the de-propriation of our subjectivity: the
opening of existence to the event, the Er-eignis of being.
This
change of perspective in Heidegger was reinforced by his intensive reading of
Nietzsche. But it is not only Nietzsche who is responsible for Heidegger¡¯s turn. According
to Vattimo there is an even more decisive experience
in Heidegger¡¯s
thinking: his reflective endurance of modern technology. Heidegger¡¯s rather negative
and controversial account of technology in Introduction
to Metaphysics should not be read too literally, but should be judged
within the framework of the whole of his thinking. At this point, Vattimo admits that in his own interpretation of the
relationship between technology and metaphysics he pursues a path opened, but
not actually travelled by Heidegger. (BI 24) For the Heidegger of the 1950s,
technology is part of a diabolic system of global political and economical
exploitation. The unchaining of technology finds its culmination in the
nuclear bomb. This high-tech weapon proves, according to Heidegger, the
spiritual decadence of modernity and shows how far humanity has progressed in
its devastating will to power, its reduction of being to beings, its
forgetting of being itself. Thus speaks the Heidegger we are acquainted with.
In the ensuing philosophical discussion he has been severely taken to task
posthumously : why talk about aeroplanes, flood control dams, nuclear bombs, as
he does in his essay Die Frage nach der
Technik (1954), without even mentioning
concentration camps? Without defending him, Vattimo
proposes a more creative reading of Heidegger, urbanising[6] the
visionary of the
What
shall we do then? Must we wait devoutly until the retreated Being somehow shows
itself again some day,? Shall we be expecting the
return of the gods, while in the meantime enduring the apocalypse of modern
technology? Heidegger himself offers sufficient occasion for such a conservative,
religious reading of his work. Vattimo, on the
other hand, prefers to read him against the grain. In order to defend a more
positive ontological evaluation of technology , he
takes as his starting point a few lines in Heidegger¡¯s late work that are easily
overlooked. There Heidegger seems to adopt a more optimistic, even expectant
attitude towards technology. The claim (Anspruch) to
Being, which speaks in the essence of technology, is overheard, Heidegger notes
in Identität und Differenz.
There Heidegger actually talks about Ge-stell as a
prelude of that which is called event [Er-eignis], a first flicker of the event.[7]
In
order to understand this apparent ambivalence in Heideggers
estimation of technology we must look more closely at the complex and
paradoxical entanglement, which he, according to Vattimo¡¯s
interpretation in any case, observes between the history of metaphysics,
science, and technology. On the one hand, modernity represents the culmination
of foundational thinking. But the modern natural sciences ultimately have a
grip on reality, not philosophy as such. Classical natural science claimed to
unravel the structure of being once and for all, discovering and describing the
way things really are by means of experimental methods. In order to continually
to improve its grasp of the structure of reality, science developed a plurality
of methods and differentiated into a broad spectre of disciplines, each of them
claiming truth. However, this methodological pluralism, Vattimo
points out, eventually undermined the very ontological pretension, with which
classical science started at the outset: for Neokantians
discovered that what we call reality is determined by the methodological
suppositions with which we approach it. Biologists, psychologists,
sociologists, cosmologists - they are all talking about things as they really
are, all of them claiming truth. At the beginning of the 20th century, Neokantians still held to the idea that an integration of
the different methodological perspectives might be possible within an
overarching philosophy of culture (Cassirer).[8] Today,
this expectation appears to be an illusion. Contemporary science presents
itself as a chaos of conflicting truth claims.
Nietzsche
already drew the nihilistic consequences from this development: truth does not
exist, he concluded, there are only interpretations. The history of metaphysics
finally resulted in the success of science and technology. This success in turn
dissolved the initial claims of metaphysics. Therefore we can speak of the end
of metaphysics in a double sense: metaphysics finally reaches its telos, but at the
same time it is dissolved into an endless spectre of interpretations. We live
in an era of re-presentations, or, as Heidegger called it, world pictures (Weltbilder).
Taking
the passage mentioned above in Identität und Differenz as a starting-point, Vattimo
comes to a different, more optimistic evaluation of the historical process. The
plurality of perspectives on the world, each one with as much claim to being
correct as the other, without objective criteria to arrange them or decide
between them, can also be regarded positively and welcomed as a liberation from
the yoke of metaphysics. In his lifetime, Heidegger knew and experienced technology
only as ¡®tools¡¯ (in Sein und Zeit),
or, in the 1950s, as ¡®machines¡¯. In the meantime we have become acquainted with
a new generation of high technology which invites us to use other metaphors.
The information and communication technology (ICT) revolution requires a new
paradigm, and represents a qualitative shift in the history of technology. We
have definitely taken leave of the epoch of the machine.
While
remaining compatible with Heidegger, we might draw additional ontological conclusions from the technological
process, which he himself could not have foreseen. A technology based on the
machine-image presupposes a clear distinction and a neat distance between the
managing subject and the reified object. In today¡¯s technology-based networks
the human subject loses its centrality, and the world
its objectivity. Subject and object get entangled, and reality is only a
snapshot in the dynamic, never ending process of oscillation between those
two. Subject and object lose their fixed spot, their definiteness in the
systems of communication of which they partake. There is no objective reality
existing somewhere outside this dynamic, there are only world pictures.
Reality is dissolving, or, as Vattimo prefers to say,
weakening. We can say it with Nietzsche as well: we
are losing being. There is an essentially nihilistic meaning in science, which
robs us of a firm principle of reality. But we should not complain about this.
On the contrary; we live in a world in which reality is experienced in a less heavy,
less dogmatic, softer, more fluid way. Risks and uncertainties increase, but so
do opportunities for dialogue and experiment. (EI 113) Heidegger leads Vattimo to the same hopeful conclusion as Nietzsche did:
the reign of metaphysics (technology as an organising and structuring hold on
reality) also offers the opportunity to experiment with new kinds of
subjectivity that do not need to be defined in terms of force, power, and
violence any more. Nihilism is not only our destiny, but our opportunity as well.
(BI 28v.)
The concept of Verwindung
Nietzsche
and Heidegger both form the philosophical matrix within which Vattimo wants to deal with questions concerning the
relationship between metaphysics, science and technology. Vattimo
does not limit himself to a descriptive reconstruction of their legacy, but
offers a creative interpretation, in which he sometimes seems to rub against
them the wrong way. I mentioned his positive evaluation of technology in which
he differs from Heidegger. In his depiction of our actual relationship to the
history of metaphysics Vattimo also uses a concept
borrowed from Heidegger, but he elaborates it in a rather original manner. The
way he employs theological concepts as secularisation and kenosis cannot be understood without mentioning the concept of Verwindung. The
late Heidegger only uses the word a few times, apparently in passing,
to describe our relationship with metaphysics after it has been unmasked as
having being violently in its grip.[9] How do we
relate to the long period of thinking, which took place in terms of objectivation and presence, which we are leaving behind us
now? We cannot just take it off as if it were an old coat, making a fresh start
in thinking, as if nothing had happened. Hegel offers a more dialectical
understanding of history in his concept of Aufhebung: reason has overcome (Überwindung) its former mythical and religious shapes,
at the same time continuing their substance on a higher level. Hegel's concept
of reason culminates in the pretension of a final, total transparency and
re-appropriation of history. The Überwindung of reason implies a victory over the world of
illusions that it has definitely left behind.
In
coining the word Verwindung, Heidegger proposes a different view,
in which he stresses that we inevitably belong to the metaphysical history we
are trying to escape. That relationship cannot be described in terms of
emancipation, as was the case with the Enlightenment. One basic connotation of Verwindung is
entanglement. We are, in a certain sense, caught up in the history of
metaphysics. But Verwindung
has other senses as well. In the first place Verwindung means convalescence.
The illness - health metaphor, so central in Nietzsche, can help us explain how
metaphysics is still part of our philosophical identity. Nihilism makes us feel
and act like a recovering patient, victim of a severe
illness, but on his way back to health. Even after the patient has regained his
health, he cannot act as if nothing had happened to him. From now on the
illness will be on his record. The cured patient will always be an ex-patient.
Our
relationship to the history of metaphysics can be described in a similar way:
our subjectivity once was affected by the same will to power with which it
tried to objectify being. We too were caught up in a web of violent structures
in which we tried to organise our world. But we are on our way to
convalescence. The sickness has been unmasked and can be conquered. There is no
reason for triumphalism. It will take time to be
restored. Perhaps there will be relapses into the old habits of the illness.
And we will never be the same again. The sickness has made us different and we
will carry it with us into the future. It has become part of our selves. The
illness metaphor indicates that our attitude toward metaphysics never can be
one of simple rejection or negation. We are the ones who once were
metaphysicians, and we probably cannot express ourselves without falling back
now and then into that ontological language we once unmasked as no longer
adequate. We still talk about reality and truth for example, although we
are aware that these notions are contaminated with foundationalism
metaphysics.
A
second meaning of Verwindung
that Vattimo discerns is that of distortion. We are
entangled in metaphysics just like we can get caught up in a rope that we are
trying to roll up. The ¡®torsion¡¯ we are involved in at the same time implies
¡®distortion¡¯: we are disturbing order and structure precisely in the activity
of ordering and structuring, and get entangled in the very process. Our
relationship with metaphysics is similar. We are prisoners of our will to
classify reality in neatly arranged, well-ordered structures. We think of
reality in terms of object and presence. But once we have become aware of that,
we might try to disengage ourselves from the oppressive straitjacket in which
we have put being, our own being there included. Though aware of the
inadequacy of this illusive way of thinking, we cannot get rid of it. What does
that mean in practice? Vattimo does not offer an
example, but let me point out again how he deals with the notion of truth.
Hermeneutic philosophers, following Gadamer, not only
distinguish between the metaphysical concept of truth as correspondence,
popular in the modern natural sciences, and truth as opening for the event of
being (aletheia),
as developed by Heidegger. They also want the latter to take the place of the
former, the correspondence theory. The paradigm of natural sciences is simply
not the right one by which to understand reality, they say; the human sciences
paradigm does better. Vattimo does not share this
dualistic perspective with regard to reality, which reveals a lingering
adherence to the Enlightenment ideology of progress and emancipation. Its point
of departure still seems to be metaphysical: as if reality were an objective
structure somewhere out there, which one can approach to a greater or lesser
degree. The concept of truth Vattimo proposes is more
complex. Though he agrees that Heidegger' s notion of
truth as opening is fundamental, he speaks of a transformation of the notion of truth: a notion that does not
explicitly deny the ideal of correspondence, but situates it on a second and
lower level with respect to truth as opening. (BI 94) The metaphysical notion
of truth is maintained on a certain level, but at the same time it is subject
to severe degradation. Truth as correspondence, championed by modernity under
the hegemony of natural sciences, still plays its role, but has lost its
monistic claim on universality. The metaphysical legacy still continues to
function: in our dependence on technology we cannot do without it. But at the
same time it is transformed in such a way that its original pretensions are
ironically distorted.
We
cannot undo the history of metaphysics, but have to accept our roots in it.
Here a third connotation of Verwindung comes into play. Verwindung also means resigned
acceptance. We have to say yes to the destiny of being that has expressed
itself through metaphysics for such a long time. Metaphysics, with all the
mistakes it has made, with all the violence it has entailed, cannot just be
regarded as one big illusion. Metaphysics, as an era of Seinsvergessenheit, a long
history of concealment of being, has to be affirmed as an event in the destiny
of being itself. This affirmation occurs in the act of re-membrance,
of the re-collection (Er-innering)
of that history by which we painstakingly acknowledge our roots in it.
These
roots make contemporary philosophy necessarily and genuinely hermeneutic: our
thinking relies entirely on the interpretation of the signs and symbols of our
culture, onto which the history of being has been grafted. The being that has
been (ist ge-wesen) is
handed over to us as tradition (Uber-lieferung). It
can no longer be thought of in terms of foundation, Grund, but transforms itself, is re-configured in the monuments and
texts of our culture. In line with Gadamer Vattimo underscores the ontological significance of
tradition. Being bears an essentially linguistic character. Language is the
only medium of being accessible to human understanding. Being that can be
understood is language, Gadamer writes in his Truth and Method.[10] In Gadamer¡¯s hermeneutical project Heidegger¡¯s fundamental intuition of the
historicity, finiteness and mortality of our being there is taken up and
explored. History is as finite and mortal as we are.[11] Being
hides and reveals itself in the living dialogue that connects us with other
mortals, as soon as one is involved in the same dialogue. So we have to be
careful with tradition. It connects us with being, not in the sense that it
reveals to us the eternal foundations of our existence, but in the sense that
it embodies a legacy of forms of life that were once chosen and lived out. In
the respectful dialogue we maintain with them, they offer themselves to us as
possibilities that are still open. In this respect, our conversation with
tradition has something of a devoted re-membrance, a
pious thinking of (An-denken). Our own finiteness is confronted with the
finiteness of other humans, who have already explored the possibilities of
their existence. The linguistic figures (symbols, texts, monuments, meanings,
configurations of value) within tradition, which continue to appeal to us,
should be regarded as classics. They represent forms capable of being
recognised by those who recognise themselves in them. (EI 143) In this living
dialogue with tradition the event of being occurs. Truth in this context refers
to this happening in which possibilities of life are opened up, rather than to
the correspondence of representations within an eternal structure of existence.
In
identifying history and being so closely Vattimo
wants to avoid the hypostatisation of being found in certain Heidegger
interpretations. There is no other being behind history than the event, which
happens and is embodied in the dialogue with tradition. We cannot make being a
substitute for the theistic god of metaphysics. In setting aside such a
religious interpretation of Heidegger¡¯s fundamental ontology, Vattimo
chooses the side of Gadamer. He radicalises the
nihilistic features in Gadamer¡¯s hermeneutical project, and in
doing so does not hesitate to use the grammar of reductionism: being, he
writes, that can be understood is nothing but language, is nothing but
tradition. (FM 182, cf. EI 217) Tradition is all we can rely on in this world.
In Gadamer there is a strong identification of the
history of being with the cultural canon of the West. The respect we once paid
to the gods, we now should pay to our textual and monumental tradition. We
should re-memorise tradition by bringing it back to mind (Wieder-holung), by entrusting
ourselves to its legacy, in an attitude of pietas.
There is a kind of secular religiosity (EI 228) in the way Gadamer deals with tradition which is reminiscent of
Nietzsche¡¯s plea for a Gedächtnisfeier (a pious
memorial festivity). Re-written in theological language, the history of
metaphysics toward nihilism undoubtedly can be interpreted as a religious
event. His theological argument here is the centrality of the incarnation in
the Christian tradition: just as God became human, in the same way being is
incarnated in history and human language. Just as God emptied his essence
entirely and unconditionally in taking on human flesh, holding back nothing, in
the same way being gives itself up completely to the play of the events of
history and culture. We shall come back to this intertwining of theological
interpretation and philosophical evaluation. Here it suffices to draw a first,
evaluative conclusion: our cultural tradition should be accepted and affirmed
as constituting our roots.
But Vattimo also adds a dose of resignation to this acceptance,
by using the concept of Verwindung for our relationship with the history
of metaphysics. Had we had a choice, we might have chosen another philosophical
and cultural background. Less violent, less severe, less
dogmatic. The history of metaphysics unveiled itself as the history of
being that withdrew under the human effort to get a grip on our objective and
subjective reality. Fortunately, being has left its traces. But human thinking
went along wrong paths, and wandered about in dis-orientation.
We cannot hand ourselves over to an ambivalent tradition uncritically. In his
evaluation of Gadamer¡¯ s contribution to hermeneutics Vattimo
explicitly recognises the lack of critical distance in Gadamers
notion of belonging (Zugehörigkeit).
We do, indeed, belong to tradition in an indissoluble way; this Gadamer rightly emphasises against the Enlightenment ideal
of autonomy understood as independence. This belonging should not be regarded
as an obstacle to critical understanding, but rather be acknowledged as a vital
condition for it. Gadamer here draws attention to an
insight common to philosophy from Aristotle to Hegel: practical reason is
always embedded in the living tissue of traditions (ethos, Sittlichkeit). (EI 80, 183 ff,
215) Gadamer, however, stresses this embedding in
such a radical way that critics like Jürgen Habermas have, not unjustly and in the name of
emancipation, accused him of being an apologist for the status quo. Vattimo recognises the legitimacy of this criticism, though
he remains a dedicated ally of Gadamer¡¯s ontological
insights. Tradition continues to be the matrix of our understanding, but in our
dialogue with tradition Vattimo stresses with much
more emphasis than Gadamer ever did, the importance
of critical judgement, free choice and a future-oriented projection of possible
ways of living. In the eyes of Vattimo the
Enlightenment handed on the torch of radical emancipation to hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics should take it over, while at the same time critically revealing
the illusory foundations of Enlightenment metaphysics. Therefore, our dialogue
with tradition should display an attitude of active engagement as well as of
reverence. (EI 42f.) If dwelling in the truth means
belonging to a tradition, and belonging to a tradition can be metaphorically
described as living in a library, we mustn¡¯t just be reading there, but also
writing our own books. (BI 82f.) Hermeneutics should
be more than the hagiography of the classical canon of Western thinking; the
possibility even of a conscious break with certain strains in this tradition
must remain a real option. (EI 145, 148) The Wieder-holung of the past can
lead us to its creative re-petition, but also to its rejection. Vattimo¡¯s severe judgement regarding the implicit violence in the
metaphysics of presence and objectivity, nourished among others by a close
reading of Nietzsche, keeps him from an unbroken relationship with tradition.
But the same hermeneutical reason that lies behind his doubts with regard to
the Enlightenment project also explains his unwillingness to break with it
entirely: we have to acknowledge that we belong to the very tradition that once
advocated the break with all tradition.
Hermeneutics as the new koinè
It
will be clear by now that for Vattimo hermeneutics is
much more than just a theory of interpretation, giving rules for reading texts
or interpreting linguistic structures. It is more even than a philosophical school , which continues to work along the lines of Schleiermacher, Dilthey,
Heidegger, and Ricoeur. The latter would imply that hermeneutics is merely one
philosophy among others. Vattimo¡¯s claim aims much
higher: according to him, only hermeneutics offers the open structure of
thought that corresponds to the needs of today¡¯s Western culture. It is the
expression and manifestation of a cultural atmosphere, in which the subject is
losing its contours and technology weakens the structures of objective reality.
Hermeneutics is a real paradigm in the Kuhnian
sense of the word: a fundamental way of looking at things, a theoretical
framework which, in the long run, will be capable of integrating all
alternative perspectives on reality, doing justice to each of them. (BI 13 ff.) Hermeneutics appears to be, as Vattimo boldly repeats time and again, the new
philosophical koinè:
the popular language in which all that really has to be said can be expressed
and communicated. (EI 51 ff.) In a technical sense
hermeneutics can be described as the meta-theory of the interpretation game.
(BI 9) However, it should be acknowledged at the same time that this
interpretation game only became possible within the historical context of
modernity, liberating itself from the dogmatic pressure of the Corpus Christianum. (FM 155) Hermeneutics should not be considered
a description of the universal human condition, but must be appreciated as the
theoretical destiny of secularised Western culture. (EI 168
ff.) It is a significant fact that hermeneutics received its stimulus
from the Reformation and the religious wars of 16th and 17th century
Vattimo stresses the nihilistic ontological claim, implicit
in hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is nihilism in actu.
(FM 166) He virulently rejects the domestication of hermeneutics as a romantic
resistance movement back to the Lebenswelt, against
the hegemony of the paradigm of natural science and technology. Hermeneutics
does not put truth against method, as a certain
reading of Gadamer suggests, but completely
revolutionises our conception of truth.[12] Truth is interpretation. It cannot be thought
of otherwise than as opening to the event of being, and dialogue is the only
place where it occurs.
Nihilistic ethics
It
might seem that in the end the nihilism of hermeneutics leaves us with nothing
but the ruins of an illusory past and a blindly erring subject,
that has completely lost its orientation. Technology is seen as the
achievement of the metaphysical grip on reality, but without its ontological
claims. We don¡¯t know what reality means any longer, and we have lost our fixed
place in the scheme of things. Vattimo, however,
draws a much more positive conclusion: the former structures of being are
weakened, we are losing our hold on reality, all this
might be true. But instead of leaving us behind in despair, the destruction of
metaphysics invites us to rejoice. Here it becomes clear that Vattimo considers metaphysics from an ethical point of
view, more than from an epistemological one. Metaphysics is will to power. (MVS
85, 87) The weakening of being liberates us from the inherent violence and
cruelty of metaphysics. For the first time in history a friendlier, less
heavy and more vulnerable relationship with objective and subjective reality
is possible.
Vattimo¡¯s
ethical judgement with regard to metaphysics does not imply a moral rejection
of its history and its adherents. Metaphysics as the thinking of being as
presence and objectivity represented a violent response to a situation that
was itself fraught with danger and violence. (TS 7f.) In the pre-technological
era human lives were constantly threatened by contingent natural and social
powers. Machine technology made the impact of the natural and social forces
less arbitrary. But it could only do so with brutal counter-force. Human
subjectivity dominated reality by reducing it to objectivity. Subjectivity
itself was defined as self-control. Under today¡¯s conditions of fine tuned
technology this pressure finally loses its rationale. We do not need to impose
an ultimate foundation on reality any longer. From now on, ontology can do
without the language of power.
Hermeneutics
is motivated by ethics. A nihilistic ethics, to be more
precise. The nihilism that Vattimo defends,
however, is not at all synonymous with relativism and moral abstention, but
rather demanding ethical engagement. Insight in the violent features of
metaphysics is not sufficient; an explicit moral choice has to be made in
favour of weakening the hierarchical structures of being. We shall see below
that the Christian tradition of charity plays an increasingly decisive role in
legitimising this choice. Charity, not as a strong metaphysical principle, but
as an unfounded, defenceless taking over of a model
for life offered as, apparently, a viable way of living by a particular
tradition.
By undergirding his hermeneutics with an ethical motive, Vattimo places himself within the hermeneutical tradition
of Schleiermacher and Dilthey.
They too were driven by an ethical ideal, though it proved unrealisable. In
their opinion, the hermeneutical act of understanding should contribute to the
experience of real community. Readers who identify
with the subject of a text, suppress its foreignness, make it immediately
present. They become part of a transparent hermeneutical communion. Vattimo considers this romantic idea of transparency, still
alive in the work of Apel and Habermas,
a reminiscence of the metaphysics of presence, which should be abandoned.
Accordingly, his critique of Habermas universal
ethics of communication is that it represents a metaphysical construction,
which betrays the hermeneutical insights of the historicity and particularity
of human existence, and our belonging to tradition. (EI 168
ff.)
The
fundamental ethical core of hermeneutics should be worked out differently.
Hermeneutics must still fulfil an emancipatory role.
It has a clear vocation to transform itself in ethics, he even writes. (EI
165) But instead of an ¡®ethics of communication,¡¯ still motivated by the ideal
of transparency, Vattimo pleads for an ethics of continuity. In line with Gadamer
and his project of rehabilitating practical philosophy, but with greater
critical distance from traditions, Vattimo advocates
active participation in the public dialogue of the historical communities we
are part of. A nihilistic ethic is not conservative, he maintains against Gadamer, but makes choices against tradition if necessary.
A nihilistic ethic, however, should not be relativistic either. Vattimo wants to uphold an ethic with substantial moral
content.
Against
certain strands of postmodernism where anything goes, against an ethic of
re-description (Rorty) which only aims at inventing
new tables of values, new life styles, new metaphors, Vattimo
looks for principles, which can guide us in our moral orientation in the midst
of the weakening of being. (BI 35) But where does he borrow the moral
substance, when metaphysics does not provide it anymore? Why, actually, should
we opt for non-violence and a preference for the weak? In his earlier work, Vattimo seems to be lacking good reasons for making that choice.
He blames Habermas ethic of communication for not
having an argument against violence in the end (EI 178f.), and claims that an
ethic of interpretation of the weakening of being possesses a much stronger
ethical basis. But the strength of his argument is its weakness. Exactly in the
affirmation of the negativity and erosion of being, Vattimo
advocates, a nihilistic ethic shows its clear orientation. The event of the
weakening of being should be interpreted as a message of being itself, to which
we have to open ourselves up. Hermeneutical ethics invites us to read the signs
of the times.
Another
passage in his Ethics of Interpretation
shows how vulnerable this defenceless choice for a defenceless ethics is,. After Vattimo has declared once
more that there is an ethical motive behind unmasking metaphysics as violence
and force, he has to admit that this motive does not legitimise a normative
choice for non-violence. If there no longer exists an ontological and moral
hierarchy, and our morality is not rooted in an order of being anymore, if we
are all free and equal to create our own meaningful universe, then, Nietzsche
has clearly analysed, there is only an endless play of forces left. Vattimo agrees with the analysis, but is not satisfied with
it morally. He remarks that unmasking violence as violence already moderates
the violence itself. (EI 157) There is a hidden morality in this act of
cognition. The very insight in the conflict of interpretations, the recognition
of the human being as a symbolising creature, which has the capacity of
transcending its survival instinct in an aesthetic abandonment of interests,
already shows the possibility of symbolic constructions that do not have force
as their only motive. But why be moral? Vattimo can
only make a plea for a Schopenhauerian reading of
Nietzsche¡¯s nihilism: a clear recognition of the will to power subsequently
leads to a readiness to renounce and reject it, just as Schopenhauer did. Vattimo does not interpret this renouncement as a
world-forsaking asceticism, but as a positive act of piety: a fundamental
solidarity with the living. The notion of piety, however, is deliberately not
used here in the religious sense of the word, but is presented as a proof of Nietzschean irony. For in ironising
ourselves until the end, we abandon the egoistic will to live and in the end
renounce ourselves. (EI 162)
As
long as it can only fall back on a decision, not further explained, to withhold
ourselves from the violence of self-affirmation, the moral substance of Vattimo¡¯s ethics seems to be very thin. Speaking meta-ethically, Vattimo¡¯s ethics is, in its arbitrary choice for irony, a decisionistic one.
We
cannot say that Vattimo in his later work makes a
stronger case for non-violence in the sense that he provides it with more
rational arguments. His non-foundationalist (¡®sfondamento¡¯) ethics remain non-foundationalist,
his ontology
weakened . But at the very moment he introduces a theological interpretation of the
history of metaphysics, his hermeneutical ethics gain much more coherence and
plausibility. By embedding it in the Christian tradition, his anti-metaphysical
nihilism finally seems to find its way into the Western cultural canon. The
post-modern irony no longer stands alone, once it is retold in Christian
language, but is interpreted as the ultimate consequence of a long religious
tradition. Piety then becomes more than an irrational feeling of compassion
toward the living, as Schopenhauer put it. The notion acquires its moral
dynamic only when it is read in its original theological sense as caritas. Charity, the Christian
principle of love, is not an idea. It derives its moral force from its central
place in the story of Jesus Christ, as the revelation of God¡¯s original
self-denying attitude toward his creation. The main moral principle in
hermeneutics and the most decisive
factor of the evangelical message seems to be one and the same. (EI 51) The
cardinal elements of Vattimo¡¯s philosophy seem to fall in place
as the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, once they are interpreted within this
theological framework, which Vattimo outlines in his
more recent work.
Secularisation
Christian
dogma finally provides the meta-narrative for Vattimo¡¯s
nihilism. His hermeneutics should be read, he writes, as the fruit of
secularization, as the renewal, pursuit, application, and interpretation of
the substance of the Christian revelation, ... the
dogma of the incarnation of God. (BI 52, 54) I want to make some remarks about
this rather substantial theological claim, which revolves around the notions of
secularisation and incarnation.
First
of all, it must be affirmed that with this return of religion in Vattimo¡¯s work he is not abandoning his prior philosophical project.
He still does not interpret religion in a metaphysical sense, but in a
radically hermeneutical one. The two belong together. Hermeneutics, with its
stress on historicity, the mystery of death and suffering, and the contingency
of existence, should itself be seen as the fruit of the historical religion
that Christianity embodies. The hermeneutical notions of belonging to tradition
(Zugehörigkeit)
and effective history (Wirkungsgeschichte)
are themselves the articulation of our factual belonging to the effective
history of the biblical tradition.
The
relationship between Vattimo¡¯s philosophical analysis
and his theological claims should not be described in terms of analogy. They
are far more substantially related to one another. The theological
interpretation of Heidegger¡¯s
anti-metaphysics and Nietzsche¡¯s
nihilism should be read as a ripening of the consciousness of our belonging to
Christian history, a return to its Wirkungsgeschichte. (TT 100) Hermeneutics, in making us
aware of this belonging, deserves a place within the history of salvation. (BI 56f.) Hermeneutics will only discover its nihilistic (
meaning: anti-metaphysical = anti-violent = ethical) vocation if it recovers
its substantial link, at the source, with the Judeo-Christian tradition as
being the constitutive tradition of the West. (BI 48) And as long as
philosophy does not acknowledge these roots, its aporias
will not be overcome.
However,
Christian theology should not be practised as natural theology, taking its
point of departure from some general concept of religion. It should be
Trinitarian and incarnational, taking the dramatic
narrative of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the dogma of God becoming human in
the midst of history, as its beginning and its centre. The essence of being is
not a hidden, eternal structure behind our reality, with a theistic God as its
ultimate ground. Being itself is the history of the progressive erosion of that
very notion of being, as a direct outcome of Christian story-telling. Theology
should be the interpretation of that history, a reading of the signs of the
times. (BI 48) It should interpret the weakening of
being as an event of being itself. Or, speaking theologically, it should read
the death of God as a revelation of God. Theology is hermeneutics, just as
philosophy is. They only differ to the extent that theology, investigating the
logic of the narrative of Gods self-disclosure in history, explicitly takes its
starting point in the traditional dogma of incarnation as its context of
discovery. But the boundaries are not clear. Vattimo
mixes up both language games without making any distinctions. If one discovers
that hermeneutics is closely related to dogmatic Christianity, neither the
meaning of hermeneutics nor that of dogmatics will be
left intact, he writes. (BI 49)
Theologically,
the history of nihilism as the destiny of being in modernity should be read as
the history of secularisation. In Vattimo¡¯s
thinking the secularisation thesis, fallen somewhat into disuse in systematic
theology after its peak in the 1960s and 1970s (represented for example by P.
Van Buren, Hamilton, Th. Altizer, J.T. Robinson, H.
Cox, D. Sölle, A.Th. van Leeuwen and many others), undergoes a philosophical
rehabilitation. It gets revalued as an essential tool
in understanding today¡¯s culture and the role of Christian tradition in it. Our
post-modern culture is secularised, when the concept is defined as follows: A
secularised culture is not one that has simply left the religious elements of
tradition behind, but one that continues to live them as traces, as hidden and
distorted models that are nonetheless profoundly present. (TS 40) By stressing
the continuity between Christianity and modernity so bluntly, Vattimo goes against the grain of current trends in
theology and philosophy. Two severe criticisms contributed to the unpopularity
of the concept of secularisation. First, non-western theologians consider it to
be an ideological, Western attempt to reduce the plurality and complexity of
global Christian history to its European origins. For it suggests that the way
the Christian faith developed in
In
coining the term Umbesetzung, Blumenberg
defends the thesis that modernity,
understood that way, is no longer the continuation of Christianity by other,
non-religious means, but quite the opposite, its worldly alternative. Vattimo, however, wants to remain a tenacious student of
Karl Löwith, who once was his personal teacher. Löwith and Vattimo both share a
more dialectical view of the relationship between modernity and Christianity,
one in which there is room for dependence and discontinuity at the same time.
In his
classic Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen,
Löwith describes the modern philosophy of
history, including the linear optimism of the Enlightenment, the dialectics of
Hegel, and the circular pessimism of Nietzsche and Spengler,
as a secularisation of Christian eschatology.[15] Löwith then analyses the work of, among others, Basset,
Vice, Voltaire, Condorcet, Turgot,
Comte, Hegel, Marx, and Burckhardt. He perceives both
continuity and distortion between, on the one hand, their philosophy of history
and, on the other, the biblical paradigm of creation, fall, and redemption as
interpreted in the Christian eschatology of Augustin and Joachim of Fiore.
Modern philosophy of history has clear Christian origins, Löwith
shows. But at the same time he underlines the rupture which has come about in modern historical consciousness, in the late 18th
century.
In his
concept of Verwindung, Vattimo
acknowledges the dialectics of continuity-distortion in a way that is strongly
reminiscent of Löwiths theory of secularisation. He
considers Blumerbergs thesis untenable on historical
grounds. (BI 51)[16]
Though he also differs with him on historiographical
grounds (besides Löwith he mentions Weber, Elias and Lübbe as his sources, without explicitly discussing them),
he particularly advances theological reasons for his claim that modern culture
should be considered the ripened fruit of the Christian faith. Vattimo¡¯s concept of secularisation is first of all based on a
radically normative theological claim, rather than on a concise historiographical interpretation. It¡¯s an evaluative
judgement, rather than a description.
Vattimo adopts Löwiths view that
modern historical consciousness has its origins in Christian eschatology. But
he does not share Löwith¡¯s rather traditional metaphysical
theology. Löwith defends an Augustinian view of life
as a pilgrimage, with the salvation of the individual soul as its goal. The
theological preferences of teacher and student are obviously different. In
stead of Augustin, Vattimo
prefers Joachim of Fiore. (BI 48/50) In stead of a radical dichotomy between
the city of
Kenosis
Vattimo uses the concept of kenosis as the hermeneutical key to the interpretation of the
Christian legacy. Kenosis and theism relate to one-another as nihilism relates
to metaphysics. It is true; there are many things in the history of
Christianity that remind one of metaphysics. That history can even be described
in part as the history of onto-theology. These metaphysical elements, however,
should be considered vestiges of an older age that we should leave behind now.
Indeed, it took a very long time before the insight broke through that the
Christian faith contains an anti-metaphysical, non-violent ethics. But slowly
and surely the story of the incarnation weakened and eroded the harsh
structures of ontology in which God the Father still was the all-integrating
centre. In the long run, the Christian religion has had a clear philosophical impact
that cannot merely be described in terms of analogy. We should say more. There
is a kind of historical causality between the Christian narrative of kenosis and philosophical nihilism. In
the end analysis the history of metaphysics can only be explained in religious
terms. (MVS, 103)[18]
The gospel has nihilism as its consequence.
But
why did it take such a long time for any insight into the errors of metaphysics
to break through? Why were there twenty centuries of onto-theology between
Jesus and Nietzsche? The knowledge of the self-renunciation of almighty God in
the crucified Jesus Christ has been available from the beginning of the Jesus
story and ever since missions have spread it all over the world. However, the
long story of success and failure in the history of Christian caritas should be told in ethical terms.
As already pointed out, Vattimo¡¯s resistance to
metaphysics and his defence of nihilism are above all morally motivated.
Metaphysics and onto-theology are synonymous for force and violence. Nihilism
is a moral vocation, so that those who hear and obey its call have to undergo a
conversion in their basic attitude toward reality and toward others. That might
be the reason why the struggle between the theistic religion of the Father and
the agapistic religion of the Son took such a long
time. The evidence of the moral ¡®superiority¡¯ of charity was not at all obvious
in the beginning. It was discovered with great difficulty, vanquishing the
powers of violence in the end. Why prefer weakness to force? Why choose
self-denial in stead of self-assertion? Even Christians were and are not always
sure. Even up to our own times, violence has survived within the core of the
Christian tradition.
In
this context the theory of René Girard plays an important role in the structure
of Vattimo¡¯s thought. In a certain sense, Girard
provides him with the missing link between his theory of nihilism, already
developed, and his renewed appropriation of the Christian tradition. In
Girard¡¯s theory of culture, religion is intrinsically related to violence, in
the sense that the systems of the sacred that religions develop are interpreted
as the ritual and mythical expression and disguise of one and the same
scapegoat mechanism of sacrifice. Human violence of many against one in order
to re-establish order and peace within the community,
is presented and legitimised as a divine necessity in religion. The ¡®sacred¡¯
and the ¡®sacrifice¡¯ are not only etymologically related but factually as well.
In Girard¡¯s view the Christian tradition
demythologises this religious violence, by unmasking its sacrificial mechanism.
Jesus¡¯ death on the cross is depicted in the gospel as the public death of an
innocent victim. The narrative of his resurrection points to the promising
victory of Jesus¡¯ ethic of agape, in which the circle of revenge is broken and
a different, loving God reveals himself.
Girard
too has to answer the vexed question why sacrificial religion has dominated the
core of the Christian tradition for so long, as the Anselmian
doctrine of satisfaction shows. Girard does not give a well-developed answer,
and Vattimo doesn¡¯t either. But the only plausible
explanation would point in the following direction: the awareness of the moral
evil of violence is not merely a matter of cognitive insight, but also demands
an ethical conversion. And conversions take time.
Secularisation,
therefore, cannot only be seen as a process of decreasing metaphysical
religiosity, but must also be seen as an increasing awareness of the
sacrificial character of religion. Christian faith is a religion, which takes
leave of the religion of the sacred.[19]
Secularisation means on, and is to be regarded as the continuation and
effectuation of the gospel. The gospel once and for all describes the innocence
of the victim and positively puts the religious mythology of a violent and
angry God behind it.
In
Girard¡¯s perspective the
function of mythology is not just ontological, in the sense that myth only tells
you the way things really are. Myths camouflage sacrificial violence by making
it sacred, and then persuade you that this violence forms part of the divine
structures of being.[20]
With
Girard Vattimo shares this enlightenment perspective
on the priority of the ethical in the theory of religion. In his judgement, he
feels a mandate coming from the core of the Christian faith. For Vattimo the narrative of God¡¯s kenosis in the incarnation can seal the fate of the violently
dogmatic ecclesiastical authorities and hierarchies within the established
forms of religion, including Christianity. In this respect, secularisation of
religion means to the Church what nihilism means to metaphysics: not only the
end of an illusion, but first of all the end of violence. The weakening of
ontology must not be seen as an impoverishment of one¡¯s worldview but rather as
a moral gain. Again, the analogy between the two language games - Christian
religion and western metaphysics - is not just accidental, but necessary. (BI
48) The history of metaphysics should be read from a religious point of view as
the history of kenosis. (BI 51)
In
this context, Vattimo also pleads for a
rehabilitation of the philosophy of history, despite its current impopularity. (EI 27f; TS 43) We should not dismiss
philosophy of history, as Odo Marquard
does, who considers it a last, secularised attempt at theodicy in 18th century
Enlightenment,. (TS 40) Western history forms part of
the history of being, and represents an ontological event that we should
carefully analyse and evaluate. Philosophy means reading the signs of the
times, weighing the different elements of history and putting them into a
perspective that takes into account the kenosis
paradigm .
We should acknowledge that in this respect Hegel was right: the history of
metaphysics indeed has come to an end, but it does not leave us behind with a
transparent all-encompassing reason, but ironically, with a weakened principle
of reality. (FM 55; TS 6, 21; EI 52, 85) But even this ¡®coming to an end¡¯ of
the philosophy of history needs some philosophy of history to interpret it. Vattimo¡¯s theological concept of secularisation promises to
do that job.
In
this context, Vattimo¡¯s critical attitude toward Emmanuel Levinas is revealing and of great theological import. In
his philosophy Levinas tries to escape from the
totalitarian violence which, in his perception, is structurally embedded within
the history of Western ontology. In the face of the other human being, however,
an infinite Otherness breaks through the closed circle of our self-structured
world. The ethical appeal Thou shall not kill¡¯ transcends ontology. In that
way a vulnerable more than being reveals itself in the midst of being.
Derrida - in his famous essay on Levinas, Violence
and Metaphysics [21]
- agrees with Levinas<, to the extent that he too
observes a fundamental violence in metaphysics. But he differs with him about
the possibility of escaping this violence in an ethics of the Other. For the Other is not only
face, but also speech. In using language we structure our world by definition
in general categories. Already in speaking we are necessarily harming the
particularity of the individual. There is no escape from this primordial
violence in an ethics of the Other. Vattimo agrees with Derrida¡¯s analysis, when he emphasises the
violence inherent in the voice that accompanies the epiphany of the face of the
Other. But his emphasis is different. He locates the
violence not in speech as such, but in the – according to Levinas
- asymmetrical character of the ethical rrelationship. The Other speaks
asymmetrically, from above, he takes me hostage, forces me to answer
unconditionally, deprives me of my freedom - all these elements point at an
authoritarian element in Levinas ethics, which Vattimo wants to reject. For it reminds Vattimo of the religion of the Father, whose place was
taken by the religion of the Son in the Christian tradition (interpreted in a Joachimistic sense, in any case). Incarnation means
that there is no irruption of the Other to wait for,
to fear, or to hope for anymore. History, i.e.: the history of the Christian
narrative has liberated us from an essentialist view on ethics and religion,
which is still present in Levinas¡¯ philosophy. The
transcendent Other, however, is incarnated in a
redemptive history. The Transcendent became Being;
Being became Event. In reading the signs of the times an authoritarian ethics,
in which a sovereign Other forces us to make
decisions, is unacceptable. Even if it is the sovereignty of
the orphan and the widow.[22] There is
no radically Other, Vattimo agrees with Heidegger
against Levinas, there is only the Same Self (Même). But this
Self has, as Vattimo asserts more strongly than
anybody else, been severely weakened in the course of its history. Nihilism
acknowledges the weakening of this Self, the
evaporation of its being. Reading the signs of the times, one has to conclude
that precisely in the poor, marginal, undistinguished modes of being, being is
happening among us. Vattimo does not plead for an
ethics of transcendental irruption of Otherness, but for an ethic of
renouncement of Sameness: a form of being that consciously rejects the use of
force to manifest itself as a presence in the world. (TT
103f.)
The
theological decisions made here are far-reaching. We concentrate on them, and not on the question whether Levinas
has been interpreted correctly. Vattimo himself
admits that his evaluation of the history of being is only possible within the
horizon of the incarnation as its context of discovery. (TT 104) This not only
makes him hesitant regarding Levinas philosophy, but
with regard to his interpretation of Judaism as well. In the sovereign Other, as presented by Levinas, Vattimo recognises the majestic God of some parts of the
Old Testament, still contaminated by the violence of the sacred.
Obviously,
Vattimo does not conceive of Judaism as a creative
religious background for ethics anymore. In stead of Levinas
concentration on the primordial character of the transcendence of the Other, one should stress the eschatological, providential
destiny that this transcendent Other has undergone as an event within the
history of being. (MVS 104) Again, we should admit that Hegel was right: the
history of metaphysics has come to an end. God should not only be regarded as
the first author of the text of history, but also as its product, in an
indissoluble way verwindet
with it. In this sense, history itself has redemptive meaning: it reveals God
in history, precisely in the process that has lead to the death of God (TT
103). God¡¯s being is readable in its becoming.
Conclusion
Vattimo¡¯s
philosophy represents an original and stimulating contribution to theological
ethics. By reading the history of philosophy from a religious perspective
through the hermeneutical lens of the Christian doctrine of incarnation, in
stead of the other way around, he has given new philosophical relevance to
theology. The separation of secular philosophy and religion, which came about
in the Enlightenment and has been consolidated since then, only leads to an
¡®Eclipse of religious ethics¡¯. [23] Vattimo, integrating both perspectives,
philosophy and religious ethics, ¡®weak thinking¡¯ and kenosis, comes to a completely different conclusion. In Christian
theology, Nietzschean nihilism normally is
interpreted as the repudiation of religion (death of God) and a declaration
of war on Christian ethics (the revolution of all values). In Vattimo¡¯s thought, however, nihilism becomes the fulfilment
of the program of Christianity. The weakness of his ethics without foundation,
which does not want to posit a god as the guarantor of the moral order, can at
the same time be interpreted as its religious strength. (Cf. 1 Corinthians 2)
Vattimo does not want read the history of post-enlightenment
philosophy in terms of emancipation anymore. A philosophy ¡®emancipated¡¯ from
its religious origins thinks it can leave them behind. Many theological
representatives of the secularisation thesis were still caught up in this emancipation
model. The Heideggerian concept of Verwindung,
however, helps Vattimo avoid this pitfall, and makes
his own use of the secularisation thesis much more dialectical. Theologians as A.Th. Van Leeuwen and H. Cox interpreted the secularisation process
in optimistic terms of progress. Vattimo shares their
positive evaluation of technology, and even radicalises the connection between
the end of metaphysics and the ontological revolution of technology. With
Heidegger, however, he considers this relationship to be highly complicated. Verwindung
certainly means overcoming, but not in terms of linear progress. We have left
behind metaphysical religion only in a restricted sense; as a simultaneous,
inextricable intertwining of acceptance-continuation-distortion. Tradition,
therefore, is the air that we breathe. Philosophy is only possible as
hermeneutics: a careful interpretation of the texts and symbols of the past, by
finite humans, aware of their particularity. Vattimo¡¯s
nihilistic hermeneutic represents a modest kind of thinking. It bids farewell
to the modern myth of total transparency.
In
using the secularisation paradigm, Vattimo does not
defend the shallow, optimistic faith in historical progress, which might be
associated with it. The hermeneutic awareness of the constitutive role of
tradition prevents him from doing that. Following Gadamer,
he calls his ethics - in distinction to Habermas
ethics of communication and Rorty¡¯s ethics of redescription
- an ethhics of continuity. (BI 37f.) Our judgements
and actions should be decided in dialogue with the norms and values of the
historical communities, which have shaped our identity. The possibility of
decisions against the grain of tradition must be left open in a nihilistic
ethics that no longer accepts final foundations. Tradition can be no more than
a helpful guide. The awareness of belonging to traditions, however, should keep
relativism at bay as well. Most of the models of life that are available to us
have been tried before and their viability has been tested by others. We don¡¯t
have to re-invent them. (EI 42f; BI 91; TS 48)
Vattimo¡¯s
project opens up fresh possibilities for the theological re-evaluation of
post-modernity. In proposing a non-metaphysical, hermeneutical ethics he
suggests a fruitful direction to a theological ethics which is ready to
acknowledge its particular historical shape in today¡¯s Western culture. However, his
project displays a number of theological weaknesses. These emerge not at the
periphery, but at its centre: in the concept of love. The Christian principle
of love finds its model in God¡¯s kenosis. Love means abandoning the use
of force, just as God renounced his almighty divinity. (Philippians 2) Vattimo considers this agape to be the single most decisive
factor of the evangelical message. (BI 51) At the same time love – standing
for the reduction of violence, the weakening of strong identities, the
acceptance of the other, to the point of charity (BI 73) – also represents the terminus ad quem
of Western philosophy, eventually resulting in a nihilistic hermeneutics.
Charity, then, is the point of convergence between nihilistic ethics and the
religious tradition of the West (BI 51)
This
is a rather bold claim, for which his arguments appear too few and
insufficiently developed. A number of questions are left unanswered here. One
of them is simply: what do you mean by Christian love? By interpreting
Christian love christologically, Vattimo
seems to identify it with the negation of self [of ¡®self-denial¡¯]. Following a
long tradition, ethics then seems to imply an imitatio dei in the Augustinian sense, and can be
summarised in one moral principle: Ama et
fac quod vis, love and just do what you want to do. (BI 51) Here
Vattimo needs to say more. For within the Christian
tradition love is a very complex notion with different and sometimes
conflicting layers of meaning. One can agree with the general observation that
¡®the only content of the myths of Holy Scripture, the history of spirituality
and Christian theology is the love commandment¡¯, as Vattimo
writes. (CC 78) But then one has to be more specific. In his conceptual
analysis of the notion of agape, Gene Outka, for
example, already discerns three different concepts of love within the same
Christian tradition.[24] Love is
either interpreted as ¡®equal regard¡¯, ¡®self-sacrifice¡¯, or ¡®mutuality¡¯. Only
the second concept (self-sacrifice) is explicitly asymmetrical and kenotic in Vattimos sense; the two others are, in their emphasis on
the impartiality and reciprocity, more connected with the notion of justice.
They include a more symmetrical view of human relations. Outka
shows how the different concepts are overlapping, and conflicting as well.
Hermeneutic honesty toward the Christian tradition would at least demand an
elaboration of the complexity of the notion of love.
Another
fundamental question is related to Vattimo¡¯s
conception of God, or being. To be more specific: of the incarnated God after
the death of God, or: being that weakened itself
during the history of metaphysics. In Vattimo¡¯s
discussion with Levinas it appears that,
theologically speaking, the incarnated God has left the majestic Old Testament
God behind. The Son takes leave of the Father, according to Joachim of Fiore.
The loving God is no longer identical with the sovereign, sacred divinity of
early Judaism. The question is: does Vattimo not too
easily separate here what the tradition of the Church has kept together, since
the early days of Marcion: First and Second Testament, Creation and Redemption,
Law and Gospel, Justice and Love, Jewish and Christian,
If Vattimo would answer in the affirmative, this would not only
have theological, but ethical consequences as well. For the question could be
asked whether force and agape are not more strongly
related (¡®contaminated¡¯) than Vattimo suggests. Is
not the dichotomy between them too simplistic? When love implies justice, and
justice implies the use of force, then doesn¡¯t love imply force? The
relationship between the concepts of love and violence should be further
elaborated here.[26]
This critical evaluation of Vattimo¡¯s construction
can also be elaborated in more philosophical terms by pointing to the way he
deals with the question of being. Vattimo¡¯s project
exemplifies a broader philosophical movement of de-ontologizing
theology by means of ethics. Emmanuel Levinas in a
certain sense, but also and especially Jean-Luc Marion, are trying to construct
an ethics without ontology, by transferring the genuine theological focus from
one to the other. As
In
conclusion, we can say that the Christian narrative plays a crucial and
intriguing role in Vattimo. It functions as the
decisive context of discovery and explanation for his notion of kenosis. However, theologically Vattimo¡¯s project still seems insufficiently determinate. Nihilism, Vattimo discovers to his surprise, somehow ends up in the
arms of theology. (BI X) But that does not mean that it can fall asleep there.
[1] Here Vattimo acknowledges his indebtedness to his teacher Luigi Pareyson, a Christian existentialist, for whom Christianity
represents the central problem of philosophy. (EI 60, cf. Idem, 67) Together
with him, Vattimo likes to place himself in the line
of Rosenzweig, Bloch, Benjamin, Arendt, all of them thinkers who put religion at the
center of their philosophy. But more than they he feels that it is necessary to
give an account of the relationship between philosophy and historical Christianity. Hence his rehabilitation
of the concept of secularization.
[2] I
will be referring to La Fin de la Modernité. Nihilisme et
herméneutique dans la culture post-moderne, Seuil Paris 1987
(FM); the article Métaphysique,
violence, sécularisation, in: Gianni
Vattimo (ed.), La sécularisation de la pensée, Seuil Paris 1988, 85 - 107
(MVS); Ethique de l¡¯ Interprétation,
La Découverte Paris 1991 (EI); The
Transparant Society, Polity Press Cambridge 1992 (TS); Beyond Interpretation. The Meaning of Hermeneutics for
Philosophy, Polity Press
1997 (BI); La trace de la trace, in: Jacques Derrida/ Gianni Vattimo (eds.), La
religion, Seuil Paris 1996, 87 - 104 (TT), Credere di credere
(1996) (I consulted the Dutch translation:
Ik geloof dat ik geloof,
Boom Amsterdam 1998 (GG)). In the text I use the abbreviations provided here.
[3] Introduction à Heidegger, Editions du Cerf Paris 1985 (Italian first edition, 1971); Intro¡©duction à Nietzsche, Editions du
Cerf 1991.
[4] F.
Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft,
(fr. 125), ed. K. Schlechta, Hanser Verlag München 1977, Vol. 2, 126-128.
[5] M.
Heidegger, Identität und Differenz,
Neske Verlag Pfullingen 1957, 53 ff.
[6] An expression of Habermas,
with which he characterizes the way Gadamer¡¯s hermeneutics re-interprets Heidegger¡¯s ontology.
[7] Man überhört den Anspruch des Seins,
der im Wesen der Technik spricht. (Identität und Differenz, 26) Technology
as Vor-spiel dessen,
was Er-eignis heisst (26/ 28) Ein erstes, bedrängendes Aufblitzen des
Ereignisses erblicken wir im Ge-stell. (31) ... die Möglichkeit ... dass das blosse
Walten des Ge-stells in ein anfänglicheres Ereignis verwindet. (29) (idem, 32vv.) Verwindung des Ge-stells aus dem
Ereignis. Cf. FM 44ff. , 165, 176; BI 31 and BI, 114, note 15); EI 175.
[8] Ernst
Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen
Formen, Primus Verlag Darmstadt 1997 (1923).
[9] Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze, Neske Verlag
Pfullingen, 1967, 64: .... die
Überwindung der Metaphysik als Verwindung des Seins sich ereignet.
[10] H.-G. Gadamer, Wahrheit
und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, Tübingen 1960,
478.
[12] In Rortys
suggestion that hermeneutics takes over the place of epistemology Vattimo discovers the same romantic dualism. (EI 201
/ 205, BI 88)
[13]
Cf. Peter L. Berger (ed.), The Desecularization of the World. Resurgent
Religions and World Politics,
[14] Cf. especially Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1966.
[15] Karl
Löwith, Weltgeschichte und
Heilsgeschehen. Die theologischen Voraussetzungen der Geschichtsphilosophie,
Verlag W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart a.o. 19736 (1953).
[16] Refutations of the very idea of
modernity as secularization such as Blumenberg¡¯s are
untenable by virtue of the fact that they do not give sufficient consideration
to the historical roots of modernity in the ancient and medieval tradition.
(BI 51). So, according to Vattimo, there are good
reasons for a genuine theory of secularization as the authentic destiny of
Christianity (and not as its abandonment and negation). The capitalist economy,
democracy, humanitarianism cannot be thought of but as an application, albeit
not literal, perhaps distorted, of the Christian legacy. (idem) Vattimo¡¯s use of the concept of seculariza¡©tion appears to be mainly
normative, and seems to be too concerned with historical facts. Blumenberg is dismissed here far too quickly!
[17] In the Postscript of Credere di Credere (GG, 98)
Vattimo
admits that his view on Barth and dialectical theology is a caricature and
promises that he will come back to this later.
[18] Zie voetnoot
1!Here Vattimo
acknowledges his due to his teacher Luigi Pareyson, a
Christian existentia¡©list, for whom Christianity represented the central
problem of philosophy. (EI 60, cf. Idem, 67) Together with him, Vattimo likes to place himself in the line of Rosenzweig, Bloch, Benjamin, Arendt, all of them thinkers who put religion in the
center of their philosophy. But more then they did, he feels the need of giving
account of the relationship between philosophy and historical Christianity. Hence his rehabilitation
of the concept of secularization.
[19] Cf. the way Marcel Gauchet refers to Christianity as ¡®la
religion de la sortie de la religion¡¯. See his The Disenchantment of the World. A
Political History of Religion,
Princeton University Press 1997 (transl. of: Le Désenchantement du monde. Une histoire politique de la religion,
Gallimard Paris 1985.)
[20]
In this respect, he continues a Kantian enlightenment tradition in which a
genuine moral understanding of religion is developed. Cf. Peter Byrne, The Moral Interpretation of Religion,
William B. Eerdmans Publ., Eerdmans Publ. House,
[21] J. Derrida,
Violence et
Métaphysique. Essai sur la pensée d Emmanuel
Levinasin: idem, L écriture et la différence, Editions du Seuil,
Paris 1967, 117 - 229.
[22] In line with this, Vattimo
rejects an ethic of obligations and imperatives (Kant) and pleads for an ethic
of the good according to the line of Schleiermacher.
(FM181).
[23] Jeffrey Stout, Ethics after
[24] Gene Outka, Agape. An Ethical Analysis,
[25] R. Girard, Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du
monde, Bernard Grasset Paris 1978, especially Book II. For the temptation of gnosticism in Girard, cf. Frits de Lange, ¡®Différence. Achtergronden bij René Girard¡¯ in: Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift, 1987/4, 192 - 225.
[26]
Cf. Reinhold Niebuhr, An Interpretation
of Christian Ethics, Harper & Row,
[27] Jean-Luc Marion, Dieu
sans L¡¯Être, Fayard, Paris 1982.