Ontology and nihilism in postmodern culture: Hermeneutics of G. Vattimo

Abstract

The article relies on the works by a major postmodern philosopher G. Vattimo to explore the theme of nihilism in postmodern philosophy. Beginning with Nietzsche, the term ‘nihilism’ was used by various theorists to describe the intellectual, spiritual and cultural situation of Western civilization in the modern era. While the last decades of the 20th century were marked by a transition to the new cultural paradigm of postmodernity, the theme of nihilism did not disappear in postmodern theories — rather, it gave rise to new strategies of comprehension and criticism. Vattimo connects the theme of nihilism with the ontological problematic of the ‘weakening of being’ and with the anti-fundamentalist post-metaphysical thinking. He develops his ideas in dialogue with Nietzsche and Heidegger, who were thinking about ontology in the era of the decline of traditional metaphysics and defined the modern situation as ‘nihilism’. According to Vattimo, the ideas of Nietzsche and Heidegger open up the possibility of thinking of being not as a solid foundation, but as a play of interpretations in the historical horizon of the European tradition. Vattimo reads Nietzsche and Heidegger as primarily anti-foundationalist thinkers whose attempts to think beyond metaphysics have so influenced modern thinking that it is impossible to understand the current situation without a hermeneutical dialogue with their texts. The most striking feature of Vattimo’s concept is the positive re-evaluation of nihilism. The loss of transcendental and metaphysical being means its acquisition as interpretation, which can be interpreted as the opening of a new space of possibilities, where thought and life are liberated from nostalgic cravings for solid ground underfoot.