Hermenéutica y violencia. Mi última publicación (Colombia)

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Nueva publicación:

Hermenéutica y violencia. Reflexiones a partir de Comunismo hermenéutico de Gianni Vattimo y Santiago Zabala, Ideas y valores. Revista colombiana de Filosofía, Vol. 64, N° 158, 2015, pp. 319-336.

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Charlie Hebdo. Irrupción del evento en el nihilismo cumplido

  

Charlie Hebdo

Irrupción del evento en el nihilismo cumplido

Dr. Víctor Samuel Rivera

Miembro de la Sociedad Peruana de Filosofía

Charlie Hebdo preparaba ese miércoles 7 de enero su siguiente edición; posiblemente entre las muchas ideas interesantes de los editores estuviera satirizar contra Alá, o tal vez contra su santo Profeta, ya que la religión es uno de los tópicos obligados de las revistas satíricas europeas cuya agenda ontológica es el nihilismo. Heidegger, mientras participaba como investigador en los Archivos Nietzsche en el régimen de Hitler, pensó que el nihilismo era síntoma de una época histórica en la que la metafísica había configurado un mundo social que se había extrañado del Ser, esto es, que había perdido la experiencia del sentido histórico y social de la vida humana misma, lo cual incluye la religión. Friedrich Nietzche distinguió diversos tipos de “nihilismo”; degradar en el lenguaje social la experiencia religiosa ingresa como “nihilismo activo”: llevar a cabo y consumar con el propio esfuerzo la experiencia de un mundo que fuera exclusivo del hombre, lo que se realizaba a través de la violencia y el asesinato para “destruir” los residuos del mundo anterior. Gianni Vattimo ha hecho notar hace poco que la religión de los europeos del pasado los hacía capaces de ir a la santa cruzada, esto para subrayar lo que la religión les significaba a esos mismos europeos. Hoy, que la religión vive los tiempos del nihilismo cumplido, es una experiencia insignificante. La “experiencia religiosa posmoderna” no se incomoda por materia de religión. Los europeos más bien se entretienen bastante con dibujos satíricos sobre el dios de la cruz, pero los dirigidos contra Alá y su santo Profeta deben parecerles aún más chistosos. El hombre ordinario, que compra revistas satíricas y tiene por esencia las habladurías del mundo público, que Heidegger tipificó en la analítica de Sein und Zeit (1927), se identifica con el nihilismo que éstas presuponen. Charlie Hebdo, sorprendentemente, no sacó la edición de la semana. Desde algún lugar hermenéutico que no es el nihilismo cumplido irrumpió Alá, o el santo Profeta, o tres terroristas, y Charlie Hebdo cerró con la muerte.

Parece existir un ámbito hermenéutico que alberga la clase de violencia con la que los europeos no desean comprometerse, la religiosa, un punto que, teniendo sus efectos en el mundo del nihilismo cumplido, puede ser tan metafísicamente activo como él. Si los europeos no van a la santa cruzada es porque el nihilismo activo se ha impuesto como horizonte de mundo; uno debería esperarse que los chistes satíricos de los periódicos antirreligiosos fueran siempre para todos, para el hombre de las habladurías, ocasión de una gran risa. En un mundo nihilista no debía haber lugar para la indignación, la ofensa o el dolor cuando se mancilla algo que alguien considera sagrado. Y de hecho no lo hay. El Papa jamás se ha quejado de Charlie Hebdo, cuyos crueles chistes contra el sacrificio de la misa no han merecido jamás comentario alguno, al extremo de que podemos decir que es una verdad social europea que la religión no constituye un sentido, ni siquiera para los cristianos mismos, pues, como se ve, ni el Papa ha mostrado jamás inconformidad con que el dulce nombre de Jesús aparezca entre las más curiosas aberraciones, cuyas imágenes pueden verse por internet. Muchos curas de Francia se solidarizaron con Charlie Hebdo, algo que es muy humano pensando en el personal de la revista ejecutado el 7 de enero, aunque esos mismos curas, en fidelidad al Papa, jamás se sintieron afectados por las sátiras contra realidades que pregonan ellos mismos como santas, lo cual muestra la pertenencia de ellos mismos al nihilismo. El sangriento final de Charlie Hebdo movilizó días después, junto a más de tres millones de personas en Francia, a los jerarcas civiles de los Estados liberales europeos, e incluso al Rey islámico de Jordania, que al parecer debe tener un sentido del humor increíblemente divino.

El hombre del mundo ordinario de Sein und Zeit  es también aquél cuya experiencia común y el sentido de cuya vida es la ausencia de movimiento, es decir, que nada acontezca, que es lo mismo que decir que nada altere, se apropie de la atención del hombre de ese mundo. Es el mundo de la metafísica porque tiene sus características de quietud, y es el mundo burgués pues éste se ha fundado en la metafísica, y es su efecto histórico, en el sentido que esta expresión se usa en la hermenéutica filosófica. Y, aunque parezca increíble, al menos desde el punto de vista de las significaciones históricas y sociales, es una clase de mundo que los propios nihilistas del siglo XIX hubieran querido instalar: un mundo sin historia, como al parecer, como Vattimo reconoce, Nietzsche mismo pensó. Vattimo, en referencia a ese mismo mundo por parte de Heidegger, llama a esta situación donde no pasa nada, donde no hay sentido, y por ello, donde el nihilismo se ha consumado como una realidad histórica, “falta de urgencia”; sobre la base de esta idea de que acontece un mundo con “falta de urgencia” que ha articulado, con Santiago Zabala, un libro en 2011 que estimula el movimiento social como tarea filosófica. Sea como fuere, no puede, después del episodio Charlie Hebdo, decirse que se vive en Europa en un mundo de “falta de urgencia”. Tres hombres, o Alá o su santo Profeta lo han hecho “moverse” o han generado una revolución, que es como describe esta clase de situaciones hermenéuticas el Conde de Maistre. Tres millones seiscientas mil personas se “movieron” en toda Francia bajo el grito unánime “Je suis Charlie Hebdo”, acompañadas por el Rey de Jordania, que se movió sin duda desde muy lejos. Esta idea de ser movido frente al mundo social inmóvil puede y debe ser interpretada en términos de evento. A partir de las referencias al evento de Heidegger en la tardía conferencia Tiempo y Ser, Vattimo trató ese concepto como una interpretación dinámica a la vez que histórica de la ontología, que hace del pensamiento del Ser también su acontecer como una suerte de hablar para el hombre que remite mensajes desde su procedencia. Estos mensajes no son, como en Heidegger de Tiempo y Ser, meros mensajes para “pensar”, sino que son pensamiento del Ser, vale decir, realidades sociales efectivas que no son el resultado de “pensamientos” del hombre, sino realidades que dan qué pensar porque conmueven, “se apropian” del hombre y lo obligan pensar, pero también lo mueven en el sentido literal en que tres terroristas han movido al mundo.

 El mundo del nihilismo consumado ha sido movido por Alá, o por el santo Profeta o, lo que sería aún más increíble para el hermeneuta, por tres terroristas humanos que no son nihilistas activos. Lo inmóvil, el chiste interminable del mundo de las habladurías, fue sacudido.  Cuando un universo social cualquiera cuya naturaleza es la re

gularidad, la repetición y la banalidad es movido, ha ocurrido una revolución. Eso pensaba ya Joseph de Maistre en referencia a la Revolución Francesa. El mundo ordinario es a la vez el mundo donde el Ser es extraño y, por lo mismo, no acontece. La realidad de la mofa de lo divino es precisamente un buen argumento de que el Ser no es allí manifiesto. Pero he aquí que donde había estabilidad y seguridad, hay ahora movimiento e incertidumbre; las habladurías del mundo ordinario del público se muestran inútiles para contener un cambio que sabemos no procede de ellas mismas y que  ellas, singularmente, no pueden explicar: no nos puede negar esto el Rey de Jordania, el único monarca que se ha movido a París para juntarse con multitudes anónimas que gritan “Je suis Charlie Hebdo”, allí donde el rey cristianísimo fuera guillotinado en 1793. Aunque ni el Rey ni las multitudes lo comprendan, algo ya no va a volver a ser nunca más igual en el mundo del nihilismo cumplido mismo, algo que es tan cierto justamente en la medida de la movilidad que ha seguido. Su mundo se ha modificado así para siempre y no sabemos ya más si seguirá siendo nihilista, pues una revolución, lo que en la hermenéutica nihilista se denomina “un evento” se caracteriza por modificar la constitución del mundo histórico donde ha irrumpido. Estamos así ante un “evento inaugural”, cuya definición es “romper la continuidad del mundo precedente”.

Es curioso que los europeos se indignen mucho cuando se vulnera el derecho de los animales, sobre cuyo dolor es difícil imaginar una tira cómica. Están dispuestos a ir a la guerra santa contra el resto de la especie humana por las ideas que Kant tenía sobre el “Hombre universal”, que se han vuelto entretanto sus propias ideas públicas y corrientes, para cuya suscripción no hay sino que leer periódicos o reírse en gacetas. Es interesante que el Hombre universal no pueda realizar atentados terroristas con sus propias manos, pues es notorio que el Hombre universal, el hombre en cuanto tal, sólo acontece en el mundo histórico como un lenguaje. Pero ese Hombre no es pacífico en absoluto, pues tiene portadores; su portador es aquel que piensa de sí que él mismo es universal. Y por ello el Hombre universal hace la guerra terrorista como parte de la agenda del nihilismo activo en todo el orbe de la Tierra, que es el alcance de la geografía hermenéutica de este Hombre, y hace vigentes así sus derechos políticos y los realiza. Ese Hombre, cuya imagen no conocemos –como ha notado el Conde de Maistre desde que ese Hombre fue inventado por la Ilustración-, ha devenido históricamente, entretanto como ya sabemos, en el hombre de la experiencia del mundo ordinario de Sein und Zeit y se ha hecho la experiencia del hombre de la calle. Para él no hay nada extraordinario ni importante en su propio terrorismo, que tiene las características de su mundo ordinario; es parte de un conjunto de acciones que hacen la vida sin sentido del nihilismo más agradable y segura, más “estable”, como se acostumbra decir en el lenguaje de la filosofía política anglosajona. Llaman a su régimen de terror desapercibido “guerras humanitarias”, y se entretienen acosando la experiencia religiosa de sus habitantes, católicos o musulmanes.

Es conocido que el nihilismo en general es un fenómeno histórico que surgió en el siglo XIX, y que los primeros nihilistas eran activistas cuya agenda consistía en acelerar la historia social, que ellos creían correspondía a un sentido unidireccional universal que podía ser anticipado. Es evidente que reconocieron esa intervención humana en la aceleración histórica como una violencia, pues el trabajo de los nihilistas era el terrorismo, el asesinato selectivo y a veces gratuito de los personajes que constituían el símbolo de la vida social de sus actuales. Eran tiempos en que el nihilismo activo consistía en balear a una reina en un tren y no en hacer meros dibujos chistosos, aunque los hubiera. Pero también eran los tiempos en que Bernardette podía ir a Santa María de las Victorias de París a implorar la intercesión de San Miguel Arcángel, rezando el Confiteor Deo omnipotenti. La actividad terrorista del nihilismo encontraba y realizaba su propio sentido histórico en la destrucción del mundo de Bernardette. Charlie Hebdo pudo hacer divertidos dibujos sobre lo santo gracias a una realidad: el 3% de franceses que va a misa y los 5 millones de musulmanes que adoran a Alá y veneran al santo Profeta. Como nihilistas activos sólo logran su objetivo gracias a estas minorías que están allí para hacer escarnio de ellas. Pero esto tiene un significado metafísico: la experiencia del nihilismo hacia el fin de la metafísica no es el fin de la historia. Y el terror de los nihilistas, gracias a Charlie Hebdo, sabemos ahora puede llegar a ser el terror de lo santo.

El 8 de enero de 2015 Charlie Hebdo apareció en las primeras planas de los diarios serios, pues hubo 12 muertos en sus oficinas. Alá y el santo Profeta aparecieron a su lado.

Caetera desiderantur...

PD: Puesto que no todos mis lectores son filósofos y se van a fijar más en las imágenes que en los textos, ruego de corazón a las personas creyentes en cualquier religión disculpen el haber reproducido los execrables dibujos blasfemos de Charlie Hebdo, pero de otro modo las cosas no quedan tan claras como debe ser. Y para los que juzgan el pensamiento por imágenes (al carecer de las herramientas para argumentar o, qué digo, para entender) vean bien las imágenes y diviértanse con ellas, que es lo que espero de esa gente.

How wired is your life? (Santiago Zabala)

Both natural and social scientists seem to agree that in this new century, the cultural, social and political significance of the internet has exceeded all predictions: our networked environment has become vital for our existential well-being. After 500 years of information and knowledge stored in print, today it has moved online and is modified constantly beyond the boundaries of time and space. We can quickly obtain great quantities of data and rapidly condense it on digital devices that are connected to cloud-based operating systems. Even our relationships, whether sentimental or intellectual, are wired, that is, inter-connected: we make friends through social networks, e-mail our colleagues, and sometimes even have our psychiatric session through Skype.

Perhaps the time has come, now that the internet and social networks have become as common as the air we breathe, to ask what sort of interaction the web implies, that is, how wired our life has become.It is interesting to notice how often this question is answered simply by noting the amount of time we spend online (following the US Presidential campaign admiring MOMA's online collection) rather than by qualifying our ability to interpret the wired world, that is, to remain autonomous. Recently, I tried to answer this question in a different manner by emphasising the distinction between wired and online users. While the latter avoid using the internet as much as possible to protect their autonomy, the former immerse themselves in social networks regardless of the personal information they must sacrifice.However, this difference does not point out how fundamentally wired our lives are and how this entails that our existence will always be involved as a consequence rather than an option; that is, no matter the amount of time we spend online, we are wired. We seem to be living in a condition where, paraphrasing Descartes, “only the wired exist”.

However, the impasse does not arise simply because wireless existence is impossible even if we stay away from computers (considering we are also constantly monitored by CCTV cameras without our consent), but also because we are forced to respond when we arehacked or overloaded with data. As it turns out, this is no longer a problem only for online editions of newspapers or software companies but also for all of us; indeed, with a wired existence, it has become inevitable. While different thinkers, such as John Locke and Norbert Weiner, foresaw these issues in their telementation and cybernetics theories, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari diagnosed it more pointedly: "We do not lack communication. On the contrary, we have too much of it. We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present". Although the French thinkers were referring to communication, which is only one feature of being wired, they touched upon the main problem involved: our vital resistance, response and interpretation. 

When we interpret, we seek not only to understand the data that confronts us, but also to add new vitality to the information, that is, to contribute to produce an alteration. Without such change, the data or news obtained will always overload us, that is, alienate or control our possibility for emancipation. This is probably why the Italian philosopher, Gianni Vattimo, points out that "whoever does not succeed in becoming an autonomous interpreter, in this sense, perishes, no longer lives like a person but like a number, a statistical item in the system of production and consumption". For hermeneutics (the philosophy of interpretation), the point is to resist through interpreting data instead of allowing its mass to overload our existence against our will. As it turns out, our wired life demands from us a greater interpretative effort than in the past, when our choices were more limited to a restricted number of personal friends, newspapers and TV networks. Today, the choice is so vast that we must constantly be aware that being lied to, hacked, or overloaded is not only likely, but inevitable. In sum,those who believe that our wired life can be measured by the amount of time we spend online are simply trying to avoid confronting the fact that we must allow our interpretations to take over when we are online; that is, we must create political alteration, resistance, or change as profound as the one Luther brought about by finding a new way to translate and interpret the Bible.

A wired life, like a religious one, must conserve its autonomy by interpreting the content independently of received ideas about the truth.

Why so many communist philosophers?

The destructive nature of neoliberalism has prompted many philosophers to reconsider communist ideas

Santiago Zabala

Reading and writing about Karl Marx does not necessarily make you a communist, but the fact that a number of distinguished philosophers are reevaluating Marx's ideas certainly means something. After the autumn 2008 global economic crisis, new editions of Marx's texts returned to our bookstores accompanied by a large number of introductions, biographies, and new interpretations of the German master. While this resurrection was undoubtedly caused by the financial meltdown allowed by our democratic governments, Marx's revival among philosophers is not as simple a consequence as many believe. After all, in the early nineties the great French philosopher Jacques Derrida anticipated this return as a response to Francis Fukuyama's (self-proclaimed) "neoliberal victory" at the "end of history".
Against Fukuyama's predictions, the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring demonstrated that history calls once again for a new beginning beyond the economic, neoliberal, and international paradigms we live in. A number of renowned philosophers (Judith Balso, Bruno Bosteels, Susan Buck-Mors, Jodi Dean, Terry Eagleton, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Ranciere, and others), led by Slavoj Zizek, have began to envision how such beginning would look in communist terms, that is, as a radical alternative.This took place not only at successful conferences in London, Paris, Berlin an New York (which were attended by thousands of academics, students, and activists) but also through such best-selling books as Toni Negri and Michael Hardt's Empire, Alain Badiou's The Communist Hypothesis, and Gianni Vattimo's Ecce Comu. Although not all these philosophers consider themselves communist - at least, not in the same way - the fact that communist thought has been at the centre of their political research permits us to ask why there are so many communist philosophers today.

The Marxist revival 


Clearly, at these conferences and in these books, communism was not proposed as a programme for political parties to repeat previous historical regimes but rather as an existential response to the current neoliberal global condition. The correlation between existence and philosophy is constitutive not only of most philosophical traditions but also of politics in its responsibility for the existential well-being of humans. After all, politics is not supposed to be simply at the service of everyday administrative life but also to provide a reliable guide for everyone to fully exercise existence. But when these and other obligations are not met, philosophers tend to become existentialist, that is, to question and propose alternatives. This was the case at the beginning of the last century when Oswald Spengler, Karl Popper, and other philosophers began to warn us of  the dangers that come from a blind rationalisation of all human realms and an unfettered industrialisation of the world. But politics, instead of resisting such human industrialisation, followed its logics with devastating consequences, as we well know.


But today, things are not that different if we consider the latest effects of neoliberalism - apart from our current financial crisis,  where differentials in material well-being have never been so explicit - slum populations are growing by an shocking 25 million people a year, and the devastation of our planet's natural resources is causing dire ecological consequences throughout the world, and in many cases it is too late to correct. UK Ministry of Defence report predicted not only a resurgence of "anti-capitalist ideologies, possibly linked to religious, anarchist or nihilist movements, but also to populism and the revival of Marxism". This revival of Marxism is a direct consequence of capitalism's existential annihilations. What is 'communism'?
Although the word "communist" has acquired innumerable different meanings throughout history, in today's public opinion it is not only considered a remnant of the past but also imagined as a political system where all cultural, social, and economical components are controlled by the state.


Although this might be the case in China, Vietnam, and North Korea, for most philosophers this meaning is not only outdated but also stands in sharp contrast with their existential justifications for its revival. As Zizek put it, if state communism didn't work, it's primarily because of the "failure of anti-statist politics, of the endeavour to break out of the constraints of State, to replace statal forms of organisation with 'direct' non-representative forms of self-organisation". Communism, as the antistatist realm for equal opportunities, today has become the best idea, hypothesis, and guide for nongovernmental or stateless political movements, such as those that arose from the protests in Seattle (1999), Cochabamba(2000) and Barcelona (2011). Although each of these movements fought for different specific causes (against injurious economic globalisation, the privatisation of water supplies, and harmful financial policies) their enemy was the same: democracy's system of property distribution through capitalism's private impositions. As the increasing poverty and slum populations demonstrate, this model has left behind all those who do not succeed within them, generating new communists.

Communism and democracy

In sum, while Negri and Hardt see in the “common” (ie, where private and public immaterial property can be held in common) and Badiou in insurrectional experiences (as that of the Paris Commune), the possibility of nonstate "forms of self-organisation", that is, of communism, Vattimo (and I) have suggested looking to the new democratically elected leaders of Venezuela, Bolivia, and other Latin American Nations. If these leaders have managed to enact communist policies without violent insurrections, it isn't because of their theoretical or programmatic strength but rather their weakness.
Contrary to the "scientific socialism" agenda, weak (or hermeneutic) communism has embraced not only the ecological cause of degrowth but also the decentralisation of the state bureaucratic system in order to permit independent counsels to increase community involvement.

Hans-Georg Gadamer/ Recordatorio de Santiago Zabala

Ten years without Gadamer
Santiago Zabala

Tomado de Aljazeera

Hans-Georg Gadamer, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, died ten years ago, at the age of 102. As the last representative of the great German philosophical tradition of Leibniz, Hegel and Husserl, he is remembered all over the world with conferences, publications and tributes. This is a man who not only witnessed the sinking of the Titanic and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but also wrote one of the last texts that could be considered a classic in the true meaning of the word: Truth and Method. This book, which he published at the age of 60, has been translated into a dozen languages. It outlined a new philosophical position that responded to our time by evading solutions that were hierarchically ordered in an absolute transcendental system: hermeneutics, the philosophy of interpretation.

Gadamer was not simply an academic who managed to attract a number of followers, but a true philosopher whose interlocutors were such distinguished thinkers as Jean Grondin, Gianni Vattimo, Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas and Richard Rorty.

When Gadamer turned 100 on February 11, 2000, my philosophy teacher told me to drop everything to travel to Heidelberg, where the last living German master was being honoured by many of the world's philosophers, intellectuals and politicians, including the president of Germany. It was incredible to see a philosopher who worked together with Paul Natorp, Nicolai Hartmann, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt and Theodore Adorno signing volumes of his complete works and shaking everyone's hand as if they were all friends. But what must we remember about Gadamer today?

As with so many great philosophers, Gadamer was also a convinced traditionalist who believed that one of the unfortunate widespread characteristics of our age is that it has lost touch with the interpretation of the great texts of Western culture. He was convinced that only by re-establishing ties with the classics could humanity save itself from permanent annihilation caused by techno-scientific progress. Although Gadamer never induced anyone to denigrate science, he was concerned with the exaggerated fascination that idolising it engenders - as that which can be methodologically analysed is only a tiny part of our experience. Truly knowing does not simply mean certifying and controlling, but also interpreting and dialoguing, that is, critically engaging with the truths and methods that artificially sustain our beliefs.

Human beings, for Gadamer, are creatures who must continually interpret their world, since they are not neutral, independent or objective observers, but rather existential finite interpreters, always expressing linguistically their relation to the world. If the realm of language was so important for the German master it's because it is impossible for us to know ourselves once and for all; self-understanding is a never-ending process, an activity that must be repeated, a task always still to be performed. Thus Gadamer's most famous dictum: "Being that can be understood is language," was meant primarily to underscore a crucial drawback that still today determines the limitations of many contemporary philosophers: ignorance of the other.

"The soul of hermeneutics," Gadamer always said, "consists in the possibility that the other might be right." This is why the concept of dialogue, that is, the necessity to "understand other people", was so important for him; after all, he lived through a violent century of wars, during which nobody seemed to be listening or recognising others. Probably this is what moved Gadamer in the first place to pursue and develop the hermeneutic tradition, which has always been concerned with the interpretations of others, that is, with pursuing a conversation with our tradition.

In this decade since Gadamer's death, hermeneutics has expanded internationally to the point of becoming not only one of the most respected representatives of continental philosophy, but also the greatest enemy of analytic philosophy, a philosophy fascinated precisely with what the German master feared most: science's unfettered methodological development.

Although analytic philosophy continues to control many philosophical departments in the United States and the United Kingdom by allying itself with private scientific corporations, Gadamer gave us the tools to respond to this technocratic age - by inviting us to respect and learn from others' interpretations of classic texts and authors. Although it is now ten years since Heidelberg gave sanctuary to the father of hermeneutics, hermeneutics keeps him alive by warning us of the political dangers of a technocratic culture and its submission to scientific methods.

Gianni Vattimo y Santiago Zabala en La Voce Di Sant'Andrea (Molfetta, Italia)

La Voce Di Sant'Andrea

remitido desde Italia.
Actividad cultural en Molfeta (Italia) con Gianni Vattimo y Santiago Zabala

La Voce Di Sant'Andrea tiene el inmenso honor y agrado de presentar a dos de los pensadores contemporaneos mas importantes del Mundo

En ocasión de la apertura de la asociación cultural La Voz de Sant 'Andrea, el prof. Gianni Vattimo y el prof. Santiago Zabala, se ocuperan de los temas de su nuevo libro El comunismo hermenéutico : de Heidegger a Marx que se publicará el próximo mes de octubre por Columbia University Press. El encuentro será moderada por el prof. Francesco Paolo de Ceglia.

La reunión tendrá lugar el día Sábado 03 de septiembre 19 horas en Molfetta, Italia (Piazza Mazzini).

Siguientes aperturas : música en vivo por el saxofonista Mike Rubini y Colectiva de Pintura y Fotografía (Lamorgese, Allegretta, Giancaspro, Rana)

G. Vattimo and S. Zabala, "Hermeneutic Communism. From Heidegger to Marx" (Columbia, 2011)

G. Vattimo and S. Zabala, "Hermeneutic Communism"

Reseña del libro de Zabala y Vattimo "Comunismo hermenéutico"("Hermeneutic Communism")/ descripción del libro / Reseña de los autores

Tomado del Blog de Gianni Vattimo

Having lost much of its political clout and theoretical power, communism no longer represents an appealing alternative to capitalism. In its original Marxist formulation, communism promised an ideal of development, but only through a logic of war, and while a number of reformist governments still promote this ideology, their legitimacy has steadily declined since the fall of the Berlin wall.

Separating communism from its metaphysical foundations, which include an abiding faith in the immutable laws of history and an almost holy conception of the proletariat, Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala recast Marx’s theories at a time when capitalism’s metaphysical moorings—in technology, empire, and industrialization—are buckling. While Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri call for a return of the revolutionary left, Vattimo and Zabala fear this would lead only to more violence and failed political policy. Instead, they adopt an antifoundationalist stance drawn from the hermeneutic thought of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty.

Hermeneutic communism leaves aside the ideal of development and the general call for revolution; it relies on interpretation rather than truth and proves more flexible in different contexts. Hermeneutic communism motivates a resistance to capitalism’s inequalities yet intervenes against violence and authoritarianism by emphasizing the interpretative nature of truth. Paralleling Vattimo and Zabala’s well-known work on the weakening of religion, Hermeneutic Communism realizes the fully transformational, politically effective potential of Marxist thought.

Columbia University Press
October, 2011
Cloth , 256 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-15802-2
$27.50 / £19.00

Reviews
"Hermeneutic Communism is one of those rare books that seamlessly combines postmetaphysical philosophy and political practice, the task of a meticulous ontological interpretation and decisive revolutionary action, the critique of intellectual hegemony and a positive, creative thought. Vattimo and Zabala, unlike Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, do not offer their readers a readymade political ontology but allow radical politics to germinate from each singular and concrete act of interpretation. This is the most significant event of twenty-first-century philosophy!" — Michael Marder, author of Groundless Existence: The Political Ontology of Carl Schmitt

"Hermeneutic Communism is much more than a beautifully written essay in political philosophy, reaching from ontological premises to concrete political analyses: it provides a coherent communist vision from the standpoint of Heideggerian postmetaphysical hermeneutics. All those who criticize postmodern ‘weak thought’ for its inability to ground radical political practice will have to admit their mistake—Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala demonstrate that weak thought does not mean weak action but is the very resort of strong radical change. This is a book that everyone who thinks about radical politics needs like the air he or she breathes!" — Slavoj Žižek, author of Living in the End of Times

"The authors argue that ‘weak thought,’ or an antifoundational hermeneutics, will allow social movements to avoid both the violence attending past struggles and, if triumphant, a falling back into routines of domination—the restoration of what Jean-Paul Sartre called the ‘practico-inert.’ Vattimo and Zabala end with Latin America as a case study of applied weak thought politics, where the left in recent years has had remarkable success at the polls." — Greg Grandin, New York University

"Those interested in the potential for theoretical reformulations made possible by postfoundational political thought and those following the rebellion of marginal sectors of society have a lot to learn from this remarkable book." — Ernesto Laclau, author of On Populist Reason

"The work of Vattimo and Zabala clears a new stage for political theorizing based on a careful probe of the current state of destitution and hidden edges of social vitality. While I do not always agree with the conclusions drawn by these marvelous writers, I thank them for sparking an essential debate and replenishing our critical vocabularies." — Avital Ronell, New York University and the European Graduate School


Contents
Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I. Framed Democracy

1. Imposing Descriptions

2. Armed Capitalism

Part II. Hermeneutic Communism

3. Interpretation as Anarchy

4. Hermeneutic Communism

Bibliography

Index



About the Authors

Gianni Vattimo is emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Turin and a member of the European Parliament. His books with Columbia University Press include A Farewell to Truth; The Responsibility of the Philosopher; Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith: A Dialogue (with R. Girard); Not Being God: A Collaborative Autobiography (with P. Paterlini); Art’s Claim to Truth; After the Death of God (with John D. Caputo); Dialogue with Nietzsche; The Future of Religion (with Richard Rorty); Nihilism and Emancipation: Ethics, Politics, and Law; and After Christianity.

Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona. He is the author of The Remains of Being: Hermeneutic Ontology After Metaphysics and The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy: A Study of Ernst Tugendhat; editor of Art’s Claim to Truth, Weakening Philosophy, Nihilism and Emancipation, and The Future of Religion; and coeditor (with Jeff Malpas) of Consequences of Hermeneutics.