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    A Farewell to Truth
    A Farewell to Truth
    A Farewell to Truth
    Ebook196 pages3 hours

    A Farewell to Truth

    By Gianni Vattimo

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    With Western cultures becoming more pluralistic, the question of "truth" in politics has become a game of interpretations. Today, we face the demise of the very idea of truth as an objective description of facts, though many have yet to acknowledge that this is changing. Gianni Vattimo explicitly engages with the important consequences for democracy of our changing conception of politics and truth, such as a growing reluctance to ground politics in science, economics, and technology. Yet in Vattimo's conception, a farewell to truth can benefit democracy, exposing the unspoken issues that underlie all objective claims. The end of absolute truth challenges the legitimacy of policies based on perceived objective necessities—protecting the free market, for example, even if it devastates certain groups or classes. Vattimo calls for a truth that is constructed with consensus and a respect for the liberty of all. By taking into account the cultural paradigms of others, a more "truthful" society—freer and more democratic—becomes possible. In this book, Vattimo continues his reinterpretation of Christianity as a religion of charity and hope, freeing society from authoritarian, metaphysical dogmatism. He also extends Nietzsche's "death of God" to the death of an authoritarian God, ushering in a new, postreligious Christianity. He connects the thought of Martin Heidegger, Karl Marx, and Karl Popper with surprising results and accommodates modern science more than in his previous work, reconciling its validity with an insistence that knowledge is interpretive. Vattimo's philosophy justifies Western nihilism in its capacity to dispense with absolute truths. Ranging over politics, ethics, religion, and the history of philosophy, his reflections contribute deeply to a modern reconception of God, metaphysics, and the purpose of reality.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherColumbia University Press
    Release dateApr 5, 2011
    ISBN9780231527552
    A Farewell to Truth

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      Book preview

      A Farewell to Truth - Gianni Vattimo

      INTRODUCTION

      A FAREWELL TO TRUTH: I have chosen this paradoxical title because it conveys something important about theoretical and philosophical aspects of our culture now, and also about everyday experience. As far as the latter goes, it is increasingly clear to all and sundry that the media lie and that everything is turning into a game of interpretations—not disinterested, not necessarily false, but (and this is the point) oriented toward projects, expectations, and value choices at odds with one another. The culture of countries in the West is becoming, as a matter of fact, though often not in law, more pluralistic all the time. The outcome of the war in Iraq has forced the leaders of the major governments who ordered the invasion of that country to admit that they lied to their publics, and whether they did so voluntarily or involuntarily is an unresolved problem on which no light will ever be shed by the supposedly independent inquiries that they themselves have set up. These admissions have highlighted once again the question of what truth might be in politics. Many of us have had to register the fact that the scandal attaching to Bush and Blair over their lies about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction was not in the least pure and objective, which is how they tend to portray it. But let’s ask ourselves: if Bush and Blair had lied just as shamelessly for a noble cause, for example in order to reduce the cost of the drugs used to treat AIDS in the world’s poor countries, would we be just as scandalized? It is no secret that far worse violations (on the part of the intelligence services, for example) are accepted as necessary when it comes to national defense. As I found out when I was a member of the European Parliament committee studying the Echelon system, which indiscriminately intercepts electronic communications worldwide through a satellite network operated by the United States, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, we are under surveillance by a Big Brother who is not in the least imaginary and acts at the behest of the United States and its closest allies. This surveillance is illegal for the most part, but even the European Union can’t do anything about it, since questions of national security (but who decides what those are?) remain the preserve of the individual governments, who shrink from taking a stand against the American superpower. Naturally I am well aware that complex Western societies have a security problem, because their technological infrastructure leaves them vulnerable. But what looks less and less convincing is the way that the United States thinks that it can solve this problem for itself and for the rest of the world, which it doesn’t even bother to

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