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Reading As Resistance
Unless you’re a professional philosopher with an interest in European thought, you probably don’t know much of Gianni Vattimo. But if you read, especially if you take reading as seriously as living, you will want to know Vattimo better. In brief, he gives some very good reasons for your devotion to literature, not the least of which is the need to understand the tactics and tropes of political vulgarity. Vattimo has been dealing with the Trump-like Italian Head of State, Berlusconi, for some considerable time. His street cred is established. So next time you feel a bit down because you or your family think you should stop reading and 'get out more', check him out. This biography might be the easiest entry into his oeuvre.
Gianni Vattimo is the world’s leading philosopher of ‘weakness’, the idea that thought, like any other human characteristic, can be a tool of power if it is misconstrued as divine. Given his controversial and often aggressively-pressed political views, one might be forgiven for perceiving a paradox. This is unlikely to worry Vattimo, who finds paradox the source of human intellectual life. Paradox keeps us searching; more important, it keeps us from believing we have final answers to basic questions. It keeps us humble, keeps us not being God.
As human power both increases and concentrates in the world, the temptation to equate power with truth as well as success can become overwhelming. The real danger in Donald Trump, for example, is not his unstable finger on the nuclear button (there are enough adults around who can stay that tiny finger), it is the possibility that he will solidify for generations to come, a narrative idea which has threatened American democracy since its inception: that exceptionalism, of any sort but particularly that which presumes a national blessing from God, necessitates and even justifies human cruelty.
Vattimo’s philosophy begins where much of American Pragmatism and European Deconstruction ends, with Interpretation as the foundation of everything contained in language, and therefore in thought. There is nothing other than interpretation against which to assess interpretation. Interpretations are, therefore, necessarily fictions, not in any pejorative sense, but in that they can never incorporate the totality of what they refer to. They are incomplete at best and are, if put forth as anything more, simply lies.
Vattimo is an atheist but this insight of interpretation as necessarily incomplete has its roots in Judaic and Christian ‘negative theology’, the study of what God is not. God, and by implication God’s creation, is perennially misinterpreted by human beings. Since neither God nor his creation can ever be fully, that is definitively, interpreted, all interpretations are not just temporary, they are dangerous (in fact heresies since they take a partial truth as a complete truth). They are particularly dangerous because power will want to fix them as truth for its own benefit.
What Vattimo does with this insight makes him interesting for literature. While others try to establish methods for ‘better’ interpretations, or formulate rules for equably arguing about alternative interpretations, Vattimo’s philosophy is very much in the manner of negative theology. His approach is to challenge all interpretations by continuously suggesting alternatives, new narratives that have an effect on the feelings as well as the intellect. In short, he is an intellectual anarchist. All authority, all power is to be questioned insistently, not through alternative centres of power, and certainly not by violence, but most directly through literature. Simply put, the writing and reading of new, innovative, challenging, inspiring stories is the primary means for ensuring that no one gets to believe they’re God for very long, even Donald Trump.
To the barricades with Jane Eyre!
Unless you’re a professional philosopher with an interest in European thought, you probably don’t know much of Gianni Vattimo. But if you read, especially if you take reading as seriously as living, you will want to know Vattimo better. In brief, he gives some very good reasons for your devotion to literature, not the least of which is the need to understand the tactics and tropes of political vulgarity. Vattimo has been dealing with the Trump-like Italian Head of State, Berlusconi, for some considerable time. His street cred is established. So next time you feel a bit down because you or your family think you should stop reading and 'get out more', check him out. This biography might be the easiest entry into his oeuvre.
Gianni Vattimo is the world’s leading philosopher of ‘weakness’, the idea that thought, like any other human characteristic, can be a tool of power if it is misconstrued as divine. Given his controversial and often aggressively-pressed political views, one might be forgiven for perceiving a paradox. This is unlikely to worry Vattimo, who finds paradox the source of human intellectual life. Paradox keeps us searching; more important, it keeps us from believing we have final answers to basic questions. It keeps us humble, keeps us not being God.
As human power both increases and concentrates in the world, the temptation to equate power with truth as well as success can become overwhelming. The real danger in Donald Trump, for example, is not his unstable finger on the nuclear button (there are enough adults around who can stay that tiny finger), it is the possibility that he will solidify for generations to come, a narrative idea which has threatened American democracy since its inception: that exceptionalism, of any sort but particularly that which presumes a national blessing from God, necessitates and even justifies human cruelty.
Vattimo’s philosophy begins where much of American Pragmatism and European Deconstruction ends, with Interpretation as the foundation of everything contained in language, and therefore in thought. There is nothing other than interpretation against which to assess interpretation. Interpretations are, therefore, necessarily fictions, not in any pejorative sense, but in that they can never incorporate the totality of what they refer to. They are incomplete at best and are, if put forth as anything more, simply lies.
Vattimo is an atheist but this insight of interpretation as necessarily incomplete has its roots in Judaic and Christian ‘negative theology’, the study of what God is not. God, and by implication God’s creation, is perennially misinterpreted by human beings. Since neither God nor his creation can ever be fully, that is definitively, interpreted, all interpretations are not just temporary, they are dangerous (in fact heresies since they take a partial truth as a complete truth). They are particularly dangerous because power will want to fix them as truth for its own benefit.
What Vattimo does with this insight makes him interesting for literature. While others try to establish methods for ‘better’ interpretations, or formulate rules for equably arguing about alternative interpretations, Vattimo’s philosophy is very much in the manner of negative theology. His approach is to challenge all interpretations by continuously suggesting alternatives, new narratives that have an effect on the feelings as well as the intellect. In short, he is an intellectual anarchist. All authority, all power is to be questioned insistently, not through alternative centres of power, and certainly not by violence, but most directly through literature. Simply put, the writing and reading of new, innovative, challenging, inspiring stories is the primary means for ensuring that no one gets to believe they’re God for very long, even Donald Trump.
To the barricades with Jane Eyre!
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