DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Of Reality

The Purposes of Philosophy

Gianni Vattimo author Robert T Valgenti translator

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Columbia University Press

Published:5th Dec '17

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Of Reality cover

Drawing on Nietzsche and Heidegger, Vattimo develops in this volume a philosophy to combat the newest enemy of freedom and democracy: complacency toward reality. It is no accident, Vattimo argues, that the call to embrace reality has emerged at a time when the inequalities of liberal capitalism are at their most extreme. Truth is therefore never objective, and resistance to reality becomes our best hope for countering the ongoing indifference to our fate.

A defense of the critical faculties that keep us from settling for the status quo. Drawing on Nietzsche and Heidegger, Vattimo develops a philosophy to combat the newest enemy of freedom and democracy: complacency toward reality. Resistance to reality becomes our best hope for countering the ongoing indifference to our fate.We think it is wise to accept reality, rather than fight for something that does not exist or might never be. But in Of Reality, Gianni Vattimo condemns this complacency, with its implicit support of the status quo. Instead he urges us to never stop questioning, contrasting, or overcoming reality, which is not natural, inevitable, or objective. Reality is a construct, reflecting, among other things, our greed, biases, and tendencies toward violence. It is no accident, Vattimo argues, that the call to embrace reality has emerged at a time when the inequalities of liberal capitalism are at their most extreme. Developed from his popular Gifford Lectures, this book advances a critical approach that recovers our interpretive powers and native skepticism toward normative claims. Though he recognizes his ideas invite charges of relativism, the philosopher counters with a discussion of truth, highlighting its longstanding ties to history and social circumstance. Truth is always contingent and provisional, and reason and reasonableness are bound to historical context. Truth is therefore never objective, and resistance to reality is our best hope to defeat the indifference that threatens the scope of freedom and democracy.

Of Reality represents the fullness of Vattimo's philosophical journey, which places him at the heart of contemporary European thought. Realistic in the face of our post-metaphysical age, Vattimo's philosophy is rooted in a theological and political vision that should be taken with the utmost seriousness. -- David Jasper, Distinguished Overseas Professor, Renmin University of China A continuation of his lifelong engagement with Nietzsche and Heidegger, Of Reality provides a reflective summation of Gianni Vattimo's late thinking while also exemplifying a mode of hermeneutical philosophy that is politically engaged without being merely ideological and that is inspired not by the ideals of an unattainable utopia but by the need to stand against enslavement, domination, and suffering. This is a powerful work by one of the major figures in contemporary and twentieth-century philosophy. -- Jeff Malpas, University of Tasmania One of the great privileges I've had during my life was to attend Gianni Vattimo's Cardinal Mercier Chair lectures in Leuven and Gifford Lectures in Glasgow. While in the former the Italian philosopher ventured into the effects Nietzsche and Heidegger thought continues to have on philosophy, in the latter he individuated it's new enemy in the twenty-first century: 'new realism.' The return to reality these movement calls for is actually a return to order, in other words, to any alteration of the political and financial order we are submitted to today. Now that these lectures are available, together with new essays, I'm not afraid to describe this book as his magnum opus. -- Santiago Zabala, ICREA Research Professor at the Pompeu Fabra University An engaging and refreshing read for any serious student of philosophy. Library Journal

ISBN: 9780231166973

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

248 pages