Being and Its Surroundings
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Being and Its Surroundings
About this book
Gianni Vattimo, one of Europe's foremost contemporary philosophers and most famously associated with the concept of weak thought, explores theoretical and practical issues flowing from his fundamental rejection of the traditional Western understanding of Being as an absolute, unchanging, and transcendent reality. The essays in this book move within the surroundings of Being without constructing a systematic, definitive analysis of the topic.
In Being and Its Surroundings, Vattimo continues his career-long exploration of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, in particular his repudiation of metaphysics with its presupposition of the existence of permanent, universal truth, and that of Friedrich Nietzsche, with its promotion of nihilism. One consequence of problematizing the idea of an attainable truth is the relativization of values and cultures. In the face of the death of God – or the absence of a transcendent guarantor of the validity of human judgments – we have the postmodern tendency to see all value systems and assertions of truth as purely subjective, and to suggest that "anything goes," which Nietzsche called passive nihilism. Vattimo advocates a more active response as he challenges all forms of authoritarianism in the world today. He brings his intellectual acumen to bear on such urgent issues as globalization, the clash of civilizations and terrorism, the crisis of democracy, and the relevance of orthodox religion.
Rather than endorse dogmatism or indifference and detachment from social engagement in the name of relativism, Vattimo opts for the path of meaningful dialogue and a search for a mediated consensus based on reason, with all its limitations.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Being and Its Surroundings: A Theological-Philosophical Breviary, Rather than a Treatise
- 1 What Need, What Metaphysics?
- 2 Philosophy and Contradiction
- 3 Wittgenstein and Historicity
- 4 Initial Paradox
- 5 The Future of Hermeneutics
- 6 The Consequences of Hermeneutics
- 7 Hermeneutics of Outrage
- 8 Hermeneutics of European Nihilism
- 9 Hermeneutics: Crossroads of the Critique of Globalization
- 10 Democracy and Hermeneutics
- 11 Emergency and Event: Technique, Politics, and the Work of Art
- 12 Democratic Fundamentalism and Dialect of Thought
- 13 Concerning Politics and Love
- 14 How to Become an Anti-Zionist
- 15 Transparent Totalitarianism
- 16 The Question of Technology Today
- 17 Passive or Reactive Nihilism
- 18 Mutual Recognition beyond Universalism
- 19 Reflections on the Dialectic of Development
- 20 The Boundaries of Art
- 21 European Religious Experience
- 22 Religion and Emancipation
- 23 Christianity without Truth
- 24 What (the Hell) Is Enlightenment?
- 25 True and False Christian Universalism
- 26 From Aesthetics to Ontology
- 27 To Interpret the World Is to Change It
- 28 Historicity and Différance
- 29 A Friendly Pragmatism
- 30 Heidegger the Theologian
- 31 Notes on Heidegger
- Sources
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index