Weak Thought 33849_SP_VAT_FM_00i-0vi.indd 1 8/8/12 11:36 AM SUNY series in Contemporary Italian Philosophy —————— Silvia Benso and Brian Schroeder, editors 33849_SP_VAT_FM_00i-0vi.indd 2 8/8/12 11:36 AM Weak Thought Edited by Gianni Vattimo and Pier Aldo Rovatti Translated and with an Introduction by Peter Carravetta 33849_SP_VAT_FM_00i-0vi.indd 3 8/8/12 11:36 AM Published by State University of New York Press, Albany Il pensiero debole © Feltrinelli, 1983 © 2012 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production by Ryan Morris Marketing by Michael Campochiaro Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pensiero debole. English. Weak thought / edited by Gianni Vattimo and Pier Aldo Rovatti ; translated and with an introduction by Peter Carravetta. p. cm. — (SUNY series in contemporary Italian philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4384-4427-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Philosophy, Modern—20th century. 2. Philosophy, Modern. I. Vattimo, Gianni, 1936– II. Rovatti, Pier Aldo, 1942– III. Carravetta, Peter. IV. Title. B804.A1P4413 2012 190—dc23 2011051056 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 33849_SP_VAT_FM_00i-0vi.indd 4 8/8/12 11:36 AM Contents INTRODUCTION What Is “Weak Thought”? The Original Theses and Context of il pensiero debole 1 Peter Carravetta ONE Dialectics, Difference, Weak Thought 39 Gianni Vattimo TWO Transformations in the Course of Experience 53 Pier Aldo Rovatti THREE Antiporphyry 75 Umberto Eco FOUR In Praise of Appearance 101 Gianni Carchia FIVE On the Ethics of Weakness: Simone Weil and Nihilism 111 Alessandro Dal Lago SIX The Aging of the “School of Suspicion” 138 Maurizio Ferraris 33849_SP_VAT_FM_00i-0vi.indd 5 8/8/12 11:36 AM vi / Contents SEVEN Heidegger’s Lichtung as lucus a (non) lucendo 155 Leonardo Amoroso EIGHT Wittgenstein and the “idly turning wheels” 181 Diego Marconi NINE “When upon the snow covered village silently the Castle appears . .” The Narrative Tendency before the Unnarratable Landscape 197 Giampiero Comolli TEN Franz Kafka’s Man without Identity 223 Filippo Costa ELEVEN Absence of Foundation and Social Project 253 Franco Crespi INDEX OF NAMES 269 33849_SP_VAT_FM_00i-0vi.indd 6 8/8/12 11:36 AM Introduction What Is “Weak Thought”? The Original Theses and Context of il pensiero debole PETER CARRAVETTA General Remarks Although “weak thought”—il pensiero debole—has been around for over a quarter of a century, it is still little known in the United States. In Italy, from its first appearance in 1983, it has received mixed reviews. Entering a cultural context marked by a “crisis of reason”1 and competing schools of historicism, Marxism, structuralism, negative thought, and diverse religious strands, it was soundly critiqued by such diverse thinkers as Carlo Formenti, Cesare Cases, Mario Perniola, and Romano Luperini, and lambasted by such an authority as Carlo Augusto Viano.2 But it was also embraced by mostly younger scholars and philosophers, and students, especially in Turin, Milan, and Pisa. In the United States, from its appearance3 and through the nineties, commentaries and expositions have appeared by Reiner Schürmann, Hayden White, Hugh Silverman, Peter Carravetta, Maurizio Viano, Rebecca West, Giovanna Bor- radori, Edmund Jacobitti, Daniel Barbiero, Richard Rorty, and others. In the new century, it has increasingly been the topic of interventions by members of the Society for Philosophy and Existential Phenomenology, the International Association for Philosophy and Literature, and other philosophy and cultural studies groups.4 Looking back, it cannot be denied that it represents the most striking current of thought in Italian philosophy in the post–WWII period, and it cer- tainly offers an alternative to the main currents of philosophy which emerged 1 SP_VAT_INT_001-038.indd 1 8/8/12 11:36 AM 2 / Peter Carravetta in France and Germany during the same period, but which by the end of the century had all but waned. Weak thought is an original and stimulating per- spective that lends itself to further elaborations and across many disciplines, and its potential ramifications may actually be more evident in a post-9/11 world. Weak thought can show the way to a contemporary understanding of hermeneutics, theories of knowledge, ethics, and discourse but without couching them in ironic or parodic terms, nor by highlighting the negative nihilism that was still typical of most postmodern theoreticians at the end of the millennium. Weak thought seeks a clarification ofwhat might be a viable task for thinking at the slow crepuscule of modernity, or at the end of philosophy, which means when most forms of theorizing cannot find a cred- ible legitimation. Among the many schools or currents present on the Italian panorama, most of which can be identified by the department or university where one or more leaders—or maestri—happen to teach, weak thought rep- resents an anomaly, as it pools perspectives and metalanguages not usually in dialogue with one another. It is by far the most interdisciplinary “movement” in modern Italian social history, strangely disorganized and wary of issuing another specialized lexicon or staking out a series of methodological steps. Weak thought goes to the very heart of the great problems in continental philosophy, but without any intent to raze all previous conceptual edifices to the ground. Quite the opposite, it believes that another form of thinking is available which can still leverage itself upon some forms of critique embedded in modernity. It attempts a most delicate task. In the following pages, I will offer an extended overview of the two founders of weak thought, provide a brief characterization of the content of the other essays, and conclude with a synthesis of its main tenets and possible developments. Vattimo: Weak Thought and Hermeneutics From very early in his career, Gianni Vattimo has been engaged on the double front of the critique of metaphysics and the critique of ideology. The first activity can be traced through his early monograph on Heidegger and subse- quent writings in the hermeneutic tradition from Schleiermacher and Dilthey, through Sartre and on to Gadamer, with a privileged place for Nietzsche.5 The second arena of engagement can be sketched through his writings (which include many introductions, translations, and prefaces) on art, poetry, popular culture, politics, aesthetics, and on some of the most influential thinkers of our time. The ever-present connection between his theoretical perspectives and the concrete and factual aspect of existence and society he so closely SP_VAT_INT_001-038.indd 2 8/8/12 11:36 AM Introduction / 3 monitored have compelled the thinker to fashion a mode of thinking which, arriving at the “end of metaphysics,”6 is cognizant of its inner self-destructing mechanism and lowers the threshold of critical expectations. At the same time, it is nevertheless capable and willing to at least retell yet again the (hi) story of this endless crepuscule, the ontological decline of Being that informs the present configuration of beings and their movements. Beginning with his first major book,Essere, storia e linguaggio in Heidegger (1963), Vattimo has dedicated many works to Heidegger and the general question of a radical critique of Western metaphysics. Coming out of the existentialism of the fifties with a full understanding of Sartrean Being as Nothingness, and the cogency of Heideggerian Being-toward-death, Vattimo nevertheless essayed early on to look at existential nihilism in a positive light, elaborating those aspects that require an ontic and co-founding dimension, the material givenness of the anthropos even as Being seemed forgotten or forever elusive; hence the preoccupation with social, political, and histori- cal interpretation throughout his writings and his sympathetic readings of Marxism (in part owed to his disillusion with the church as an institution for viable reform).7 As a militant intellectual in the sixties and the seventies, Vattimo has always been left of center. In fact we might say he has fruitfully “used” the Left (in particular, besides Marx, Sartre, and Adorno) to keep his readings of Heidegger and Nietzsche from slipping into specious analyses and conservative or “negative” ideologies. This background has allowed Vattimo to “comprehend” the positions of the anti-Heideggerians, by expanding the very horizon within which the fundamental questions of our age could be framed. He thus begins to explore afresh the notions of lived-time, of trans-mission, and of participation, in the spirit of Heideggerian re-calling and remember- ing. What is key here is to bear in mind this ultimately courageous philo- sophical gesture, that of confronting the bleak landscape which his French colleagues Derrida, Foucault, and Baudrillard were relentlessly painting in ever-darker hues. During this time Vattimo also publishes studies that will be gathered into the key 1980 volume Le avventure della differenza,8 among which and relevant to our sketch is the first chapter, “Hermeneutic Reason and Dialectical