Not Being God: A Collaborative AutobiographyGianni Vattimo, a leading philosopher of the continental school, has always resisted autobiography. But in this intimate memoir, the voice of Vattimo as thinker, political activist, and human being finds its expression on the page. With Piergiorgio Paterlini, a noted Italian writer and journalist, Vattimo reflects on a lifetime of politics, sexual radicalism, and philosophical exuberance in postwar Italy. Turin, the city where he was born and one of the intellectual capitals of Europe (also the city in which Nietzsche went mad), forms the core of his reminiscences, enhanced by fascinating vignettes of studying under Hans Georg Gadamer, teaching in the United States, serving as a public intellectual and interlocutor of Habermas and Derrida, and working within the European Parliament to unite Europe. Vattimo's status as a left-wing faculty president paradoxically made him a target of the Red Brigades in the 1970s, causing him to flee Turin for his life. Left-wing terrorism did not deter the philosopher from his quest for social progress, however, and in the 1980s, he introduced a daring formulation called "weak thought," which stripped metaphysics, science, religion, and all other absolute systems of their authority. Vattimo then became notorious both for his renewed commitment to the core values of Christianity (he was trained as a Catholic intellectual) and for the Vatican's denunciation of his views. Paterlini weaves his interviews with Vattimo into an utterly candid first-person portrait, creating a riveting text that is destined to become one of the most compelling accounts of homosexuality, history, politics, and philosophical invention in the twentieth century. |
Contents
Analogies | |
Incipit 1 | |
Last Things 5 | |
Closeness 7 | |
The Untied Shoelace 9 | |
Rorschach Test | |
Plateau Rosa | |
Being 17 | |
Revolutionary Moralism 84 | |
Weak Thought 86 | |
Roots 89 | |
37 | |
A Safe Pair ofHands 96 | |
The Volunteer for Weak Thought 98 | |
40 | |
In History 106 | |
Epochs | |
The Impossible Return | |
Debut | |
On the Banks of the Neckar | |
Mad utterly desperate study | |
Vampires | |
Paradigms | |
Popular Novel | |
Oratory | |
Catholic Action | |
Beyond the Horizon | |
WorkingClass School | |
Demonic Possession xi 12 14 20 | |
Ulcer and Mao 52 | |
22 | |
The Dream ofa Thing 53 | |
Porta Palazzo 57 | |
25 | |
The Movement 61 | |
27 | |
The Bicycle Left Behind 66 | |
Lukácss Slippers 70 | |
30 | |
In America 76 | |
32 | |
33 | |
42 | |
Barbarians 111 | |
44 | |
Obituaries 116 | |
Cacciari 118 | |
Eco 120 | |
48 | |
Under a Bad Sign 123 | |
50 | |
The Rich Fiancée 134 | |
The Little Old Lady in New York 136 | |
Almost a Mayor 138 | |
The End of Prehistory? 141 | |
Joachim of Fiore 145 | |
At a Certain Hour 147 | |
Return to Christianity 149 | |
Some Reality Please 153 | |
If Stalin Had Been a Nihilist 156 | |
If I Werent God 160 | |
The Treasure Chest of Being 162 | |
Flashes 163 | |
Envoi 165 | |
Abbreviations 171 | |
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Not Being God: A Collaborative Autobiography Gianni Vattimo,Piergiorgio Paterlini Limited preview - 2009 |
Common terms and phrases
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