Summary
Gianni Vattimo: To believe that you believe
The shock with which Mussolini's fascism stunned the Italian cultural scene did not lead to such disastrous consequences as those produced by German National Socialism. Gianni Vattimo emerged from the post-war confusion and some kind of reckoning with fascism and tackled Nietzsche's great philosophy without prejudice. From his readings of Nietzsche and his intensive stay in the vicinity of French poststructuralism, a unique expression is born that pushes Vattima to the very top of Italian philosophy. Vattimo did not write the book "Believe that you believe" at the peak of fame and power, but at the moment when he realized the power of weakness, what he calls "weak thinking". Not only does Vatimo here examine the strength of his own belief, not only does he subject personal doubts to brilliant and merciless analysis, but he elaborates an unstable philosophical model for which instability itself is constitutive. But in order to bring a stable structure out of balance, it is necessary to work hard to undermine its foundations. Through various forms of demythologizing - demythologizing himself, or personal sexual preferences - ending with demythologizing the myth itself, Vattimo occupies an exciting position without a position, he tries to dance by suggesting that we constantly slip the ground from under his feet. The conversation between Vattimo and Richard Rorty at the end of the book is a kind of summary of what Vattimo was developing in the book.
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