Weakening Philosophy (Essays in Honour of Gianni Vattimo)

Gianni Vattimo is one of the world's most important philosophers, yet he has received scant attention in the English-speaking world. The essays in Weakening Philosophy, from leading figures such as Umberto Eco and Charles Taylor, introduce his ideas to a wider audience.

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.

Bringing together twenty-one influential philosophers, theologians, and literary critics, Weakening Philosophy is an important assessment of Vattimo's influence and the major tenets of his thought.

Contributors include Rüdiger Bubner (Heidelberg), Carmelo Dotolo (Pontifical Urbaniana), Paolo Flores d'Arcais (Rome "La Sapienza"), Umberto Eco (Bologna), Manfred Frank (Eberhard Karls, Tübingen), Jean Grondin (Montreal), Nancy Frankenberry (Dartmouth College), Giacomo Marramao (Rome "Tre"), Jack Miles (Getty Trust), Jean-Luc Nancy (Marc Bloch, Strasbourg), Teresa Oñate (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia), Jeffrey Perl (Bar-Ilan University), James Risser (Seattle), Richard Rorty (Stanford), Pier Aldo Rovatti (Trieste), Fernando Savater (Complutense, Madrid), Reiner Schürmann (Duquesne), Hugh J. Silverman (Stony Brook), Charles Taylor (McGill), Gianni Vattimo (Turin), Wolfgang Welsch (Friedrich-Schiller University Jena), and Santiago Zabala (Pontifical Lateran, Rome).