Santiago Zabala

Intro -- Table of Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. The Emergency of Aesthetics -- 2. Emergency Through Art -- 3. Emergency Aesthetics -- Afterword -- Notes -- Index

Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency

Why Only Art Can Save Us

Corrado Federici

Gianni Vattimo

Alberto Martinengo

Giuseppe Iannantuono

Being and Its Surroundings

Jeff Malpas

Celebrates the 50th anniversary of the publication of one of the most important philosophical works in the 20th century with essays by most of the leading figures in contemporary hermeneutic theory.

Fifty Years After Gadamer's Truth and Method

Consequences of Hermeneutics

Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala recast Karl Marx's theories at a time when capitalism's metaphysical moorings are buckling. Leaving aside the ideal of development and the general call for revolution, hermeneutic communism relies on interpretation rather than truth and proves more flexible in different contexts. It motivates a resistance to capitalism's inequalities yet intervenes against violence and authoritarianism by emphasizing the interpretative nature of truth. Paralleling Vattimo and Zabala's work on the weakening of religion, Hermeneutic Communism realizes the effective potential of Marxist thought.

A Study of Ernst Tugendhat

The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy

Having lost much of its political clout and theoretical power, communism no longer represents an appealing alternative to capitalism. In its original Marxist formulation, communism promised an ideal of development, but only through a logic of war, and while a number of reformist governments still promote this ideology, their legitimacy has steadily declined since the fall of the Berlin wall. Separating communism from its metaphysical foundations, which include an abiding faith in the immutable laws of history and an almost holy conception of the proletariat, Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala recast Marx’s theories at a time when capitalism’s metaphysical moorings—in technology, empire, and industrialization—are buckling. While Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri call for a return of the revolutionary left, Vattimo and Zabala fear this would lead only to more violence and failed political policy. Instead, they adopt an antifoundationalist stance drawn from the hermeneutic thought of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty. Hermeneutic communism leaves aside the ideal of development and the general call for revolution; it relies on interpretation rather than truth and proves more flexible in different contexts. Hermeneutic communism motivates a resistance to capitalism’s inequalities yet intervenes against violence and authoritarianism by emphasizing the interpretative nature of truth. Paralleling Vattimo and Zabala’s well-known work on the weakening of religion, Hermeneutic Communism realizes the fully transformational, politically effective potential of Marxist thought.

From Heidegger to Marx

Hermeneutic Communism

Moving away from Jacques Derrida's deconstructionism and Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics, and building on his experiences as a politician, Vattimo asks if it is still possible to speak of moral imperatives, individual rights, and political freedom. Acknowledging the force of Nietzsche's "God is dead," Vattimo argues for a philosophy of pensiero debole or "weak thinking" that shows how moral values can exist without being guaranteed by an external authority. His secularising interpretation stresses anti-metaphysical elements and puts philosophy into a relationship with postmodern culture.

Essays in Honour of Gianni Vattimo

Weakening Philosophy

Politicians and philosophers presenting themselves as the ultimate bearers of truth and reality have created unprecedented technological, cultural, and political framings. This new order conspires to undermine the interpretive practices of open-ended critique, normalizing a sense of threat to preserve control. The greatest emergency has become the absence of emergencies. Tracing an intellectual alliance between academics such as Jordan Peterson and Christina Hoff Sommers and right-wing populist politicians such as Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen, this book denounces framings that make a claim to objectivity. With the help of contemporary thinkers including Bruno Latour, Judith Butler, and Giorgio Agamben, as well as discussion of the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie and the emergency of biodiversity loss due to climate change, Santiago Zabala illustrates that the twenty-first-century question is not whether we can be free, but how to be at large - unconstrained by the new realist order. Being at Large demonstrates the anarchic power of hermeneutics, calling for interpretive disruptions of the authoritarian narrative as a way of reclaiming freedom in the age of alternative facts.

Santiago Zabala

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