Beyond interpretation: the meaning of hermeneutics for philosophy

Abstract

of Philosophy at the University of Turin, concludes that hermeneutics represents the beginning of the end for Western metaphysics, as well as the best future for philosophy (and theology?)as a whole.In the first chapter, "The Nihilistic Vocation of Hermeneutics," he distances hermeneutics from its pejorative version which exists as "a comfortable metatheory of the universality of interpretative phenomena, as a sort of view from nowhere of the perennial conflict, or play, of interpretations...." Habermas' appeal to communicative rationality, Gadamer's appeal to the logos of textual traditions, and Rorty's romantic aestheticism and vitalism constitute weakly veiled versions of this "view from nowhere."He asserts that hermeneutics "is not only a theory of the historicity (horizons) of truth: it is itself a radically historical truth."Hermeneutics, therefore, must not shrink from thinking its own historicity, at the same time that it identifies the historicity of all theory and truth.This, he asserts, is the "nihilistic vocation" of hermeneutics.Following Nietzsche, he asserts that "there can be no recognition of the essentially interpretative character of the experience of the true without the death of God and without the fabling of the world or, which amounts to the same thing, of Being."The horizon within which hermeneutics is correctly practiced is essentially nihilistic: "There are no facts, only interpretation; and this too is an interpretation."Unlike Heidegger, who proposes the end of metaphysics as an effort to prepare for a return of a forgotten Being, Vattimo narrates hermeneutics as "the story of a long goodbye/ of an interminable weakening of Being....of the oblivion of Being."In part, this oblivion is necessary in order to overcome the violence that ensues even in the most subtle instances in which Being asserts itself as "the ultimate foundation before which one can only fall silent and, perhaps, feel admiration...," in which Being becomes "an authority that keeps things quiet and takes control without explanation."Within this ethical horizon, nihilism becomes "a chance...of emancipation."It is terrifying, however, to imagine what might happen if this "chance" leads more in the direction of Nietzsche's will to power than toward Christian charity.More fundamental, for Vattimo, is the Trinitarian underpinning for this "weakening of Being."He sees in the weakening of Being a direct analogue, if not a direct implication, of the Christian doctrine of incarnation.He points out that the Judeo-Christian

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