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28-484: In her anthology, Recoding Metaphysics: The New Italian Philosophy, Borradori presented late 20th-century Italian thinkers, such as Gianni Vattimo , Massimo Cacciari , Mario Perniola , and Emanuele Severino , to the American audience. In The American Philosopher: Conversations with Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Nozick, Danto, Rorty, Cavell, MacIntyre, Kuhn, she pressed her interlocutors to reflect on their relation to history,

56-436: A Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida , seeks to evaluate the full philosophical and political significance of 9/11 in conversation with two important European thinkers. Overcoming their historical enmity, Habermas and Derrida appear in her book side by side for the first time in their lives. Borradori's book opened the way for their critical collaboration on the public sphere, which continued with

84-558: A condition for global justice. Gianni Vattimo Gianteresio Vattimo (4 January 1936 – 19 September 2023) was an Italian philosopher and politician. Gianteresio Vattimo was born in Turin , Piedmont . He studied philosophy under the existentialist Luigi Pareyson at the University of Turin , and graduated with a laurea in 1959. In 1963 he moved to Heidelberg and studied with Karl Löwith , Habermas and Hans-Georg Gadamer with

112-577: A declaration of support for the anti-war demonstrations of February 15, 2003. Entitled, "February 15, or, What Binds Europeans Together: Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in Core Europe," their joint statement appeared simultaneously in major European newspapers and was later published in " Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe " (Verso, 2005). In Philosophy in a Time of Terror , Borradori asserts that militant religious fundamentalists explicitly reject secularization and modernity , which constitute

140-672: A legitimate voice of the Palestinian people . On 22 July 2014, in response to the IDF military operation on Gaza , Vattimo said he would personally like to "shoot those bastard Zionists" and thinks Europeans should raise money "to buy Hamas some more rockets". He expressed his willingness to go to Gaza and fight side by side with Hamas and asserted, when asked if he would shoot at Israelis, that: 'By nature I'm non-violent, but I'd shoot at those (of them) who bomb hospitals, private clinics and children.' Vattimo added that for him these were 'pure Nazis',

168-531: A moment of indignation against the prolonged bombing of Gaza by the Israeli army, Vattimo apologized to an Israeli newspaper ( Haaretz ). "In a telephone interview [...], Gianni Vattimo said he “regrets” such words and “feels ashamed” by them", claiming he was "provoked" by the hosts of the show on which he made his comments. Gifford Lectures The Gifford Lectures ( / ˈ ɡ ɪ f ər d / ) are an annual series of lectures which were established in 1887 by

196-566: A practical development of the "weak thought" into the frame of a political perspective. His next political book, co-authored with Santiago Zabala, is Hermeneutic Communism: From Heidegger to Marx (2011). The authors explain the book Hermeneutic Communism as follows: "Although the material published here had never been released before, there are two books that have determined the production of this text: Gianni's Ecce Comu: Come si diventa cio che si era (2007) and Santiago's The Remains of Being: Hermeneutic Ontology After Metaphysics (2009). In

224-547: A scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation . Then, Vattimo returned to Turin where he became assistant professor in 1964, and later full professor of Aesthetics in 1969. While remaining at Turin, becoming Professor of Theoretical Philosophy in 1982, he had been a visiting professor at a number of American Universities. For his works, he received honorary degrees from the universities of La Plata , Palermo , Madrid , Havana , and San Marcos of Lima. Vattimo said he

252-548: A series over an academic year and given with the intent that the edited content be published in book form. A number of these works have become classics in the fields of theology or philosophy and the relationship between religion and science . In 1889, those attending the Gifford Lectures at the University of St Andrews were described as "mixed" and included women as well as male undergraduates . The first woman appointed

280-399: Is an interpretation" amounts to saying that hermeneutics cannot be seen as the most accurate/true description of the permanent structures of the reality of human existence . Hermeneutics is not a metaphysical theory in this sense and so can only be "proved" by being presented as the response to a history of being, a history of the fabling of the world, of the weakening of structures, that is as

308-617: The University of Glasgow . In the same year he participated in the Subversive Film Festival . In March 2012 he was a speaker at the national congress of the Grand Orient of Italy in Rimini . Vattimo died in Turin on 19 September 2023, at the age of 87. Vattimo's philosophy can be characterized as postmodern with his emphasis on "pensiero debole" (weak thought). This requires that

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336-478: The will of Adam Gifford, Lord Gifford at the four ancient universities of Scotland : St Andrews , Glasgow , Aberdeen and Edinburgh . Their purpose is to "promote and diffuse the study of natural theology in the widest sense of the term – in other words, the knowledge of God." A Gifford lectures appointment is one of the most prestigious honours in Scottish academia. University calendars record that at

364-510: The 'destiny of Being ' ... the orientating principle that enables it to realize its own original inclination for ethics whilst neither restoring metaphysics nor surrendering to the futility of a relativistic philosophy of culture" (1992:119). In 2004, after leaving the party of the Democrats of the Left, he endorsed Marxism , reassessing positively its projection principles and wishing for a "return" to

392-450: The 'lie', the discovery that alleged ' values ' and metaphysical structures are just a play of forces" (1993:93), plays an important role in Vattimo's notion of "weak thought". Vattimo embraced Friedrich Nietzsche 's nihilist idea of God's death . Vattimo rejected any notion of a transcendental structure of reason or reality that would be given once and for all. This does not imply

420-488: The conceptual foundations of the Enlightenment . This leads Borradori to claim that an appropriate response to 9/11 must reach "as far as a critical reassessment of the validity of the Enlightenment project" (10). Habermas and Derrida discuss their different interpretations of Kant's legacy, both agreeing, however, with the crux of his political philosophy: the legitimacy of international legal and political institutions as

448-420: The form of a decision for non-violence" (1992:95). An ethics of communication along the lines suggested by Jürgen Habermas suffers, according to Vattimo, from finding itself in a substantially ahistorical position, while oscillating between formalism and cultural relativism (1992:117). For Vattimo it is only when hermeneutics accepts its nihilistic destiny that "it can find in 'negativity,' in dissolution as

476-483: The former, Vattimo emphasized the political necessity of reevaluating communism ; in the latter, Zabala insisted on the progressive nature of hermeneutics . Hermeneutic Communism can be considered a radical development of both." Vattimo added his name to a petition released on 28 February 2009, calling on the European Union to remove Hamas from its list of terrorist organizations and grant it full recognition as

504-507: The foundational certainties of modernity with its emphasis on objective truth founded in a rational unitary subject be relinquished for a more multi-faceted conception closer to that of the arts . He draws on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger with his critique of foundations and the hermeneutic philosophy of his teacher Hans-Georg Gadamer . Perhaps his greatest influence though is the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche , whose "discovery of

532-500: The four Scottish universities, the Gifford Lectures are to be "public and popular, open not only to students of the university, but the whole community (for a tuition fee ) without matriculation . Besides a general audience, the Lecturer may form a special class of students for the study of the subject, which will be conducted in the usual way, and tested by examination and thesis, written and oral". The lectures are normally presented as

560-495: The loss of truth , but a Heideggerean reinterpretation of truth as the opening of horizons. Such truth is deeper than propositions which are made possible by such openings. Philosophies then are always responses to contingent questions, they are ' ontologies of actuality ,' a thesis that can be confirmed by the historico-cultural links of particular philosophies. For hermeneutics to be consistent with its own rejection of metaphysics , it must present itself, argues Vattimo "as

588-436: The most persuasive philosophical interpretation of a situation or ' epoch '" (1997:10). To do this, Vattimo proposed a reading of hermeneutics as having a "nihilistic" vocation. To Vattimo, hermeneutics has become boring and vague, lacking any clear significance for philosophical problems. His answer was to insist on the nihilistic consequences of hermeneutics. The claim that "there are no facts only interpretations and this too

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616-425: The occurrence of nihilism. This nihilistic reading of history involves a certain attitude towards modernity , whereby modernity is dissolved from within through a twisting, distorting radicalisation of its premises. Vattimo uses Heidegger's term Verwindung to capture this post-modern recovery from modernity. History as a process of weakening (secularisation and disenchantment are other terms Vattimo uses) "assumes

644-448: The squalid reproposal of anti-Semitic stereotypes". Rabbi Barbara Aiello, Italy's first female rabbi, also accused Vattimo of anti-Semitism. Reacting to his "Zionist bastards" statements and to others like it, the foreign ministers for Italy, France and Germany said that they condemn such language as well as violence that has occurred at pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Europe. Pronounced in

672-526: The state itself a Nazi state (uno stato nazista) perhaps somewhat worse even than Hitler because, in Israel's case, they have the support of the great Western democracies. Vattimo had been accused of anti-Semitism due to his anti-Zionism . Renzo Gattegna , the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities , accused him of anti-Semitism, writing "words of hatred that don't add anything new and are accompanied by

700-468: The thought of the Trier philosopher and to a communism , rid of distorted Soviet developments, which have to be dialectically overcome. Vattimo asserted the continuity of his new choices with the "weak thought," thus having changed "many of his ideas." He namely referred to a "weakened Marx," as an ideological basis capable of showing the real nature of communism. The new Marxist approach, therefore, emerged as

728-448: The weight of tradition in philosophy, and their encounters with pragmatism and logical positivism . The American Philosopher was one of the first critical examinations of the historical and institutional context in which contemporary American philosophy operates. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 , Borradori became a strong voice in the study of terrorism from a philosophical perspective. Her latest book, Philosophy in

756-572: Was Hannah Arendt who presented in Aberdeen between 1972 and 1974. A comparable lecture series is the John Locke Lectures , which are delivered annually at the University of Oxford . Established at the behest of John Templeton , the Gifford Lectures website was designed to increase the strategic impact of the Gifford program. Developed and managed by Templeton Press through May 2021, the website

784-679: Was exempted from military service. After being active in the Radical Party , the short-lived Alleanza per Torino , and the Democrats of the Left , Vattimo joined the Party of Italian Communists . He was elected a member of the European Parliament first in 1999 and for a second mandate in 2009. Vattimo was openly gay. In 2010, he delivered the Gifford Lectures on The End of Reality at

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