| Not Being God: A Collaborative Autobiography Contributor(s): Vattimo, Gianni (Author), Paterlini, Piergiorgio (With), McCuaig, William (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0231147201 ISBN-13: 9780231147200 Publisher: Columbia University Press OUR PRICE: $84.15 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: May 2009 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs - Philosophy | Movements - Deconstruction |
| Dewey: B |
| LCCN: 2008045981 |
| Physical Information: 0.9" H x 5.8" W x 7.1" (0.75 lbs) 200 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Gianni Vattimo, a leading philosopher of the continental school, has always resisted autobiography. But in this intimate memoir, the voice of Vattimo as thinker, political activist, and human being finds its expression on the page. With Piergiorgio Paterlini, a noted Italian writer and journalist, Vattimo reflects on a lifetime of politics, sexual radicalism, and philosophical exuberance in postwar Italy. Turin, the city where he was born and one of the intellectual capitals of Europe (also the city in which Nietzsche went mad), forms the core of his reminiscences, enhanced by fascinating vignettes of studying under Hans Georg Gadamer, teaching in the United States, serving as a public intellectual and interlocutor of Habermas and Derrida, and working within the European Parliament to unite Europe. Vattimo's status as a left-wing faculty president paradoxically made him a target of the Red Brigades in the 1970s, causing him to flee Turin for his life. Left-wing terrorism did not deter the philosopher from his quest for social progress, however, and in the 1980s, he introduced a daring formulation called "weak thought," which stripped metaphysics, science, religion, and all other absolute systems of their authority. Vattimo then became notorious both for his renewed commitment to the core values of Christianity (he was trained as a Catholic intellectual) and for the Vatican's denunciation of his views. Paterlini weaves his interviews with Vattimo into an utterly candid first-person portrait, creating a riveting text that is destined to become one of the most compelling accounts of homosexuality, history, politics, and philosophical invention in the twentieth century. |
Contributor Bio(s): Vattimo, Gianni: - Gianni Vattimo (PhD, Philosophy, Turin) is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Turin. He is the author of a large number of books, most of which have been translated into English, including Of Reality (Columbia, 2016), A farewell to Truth (Columbia, 2011), and The Responsibility of the Philosopher (Columbia, 2010). He is also known for his political activism in support of gay rights and has served as a member of the European Parliament. As a philosopher he is known for his espousal of nihilism, his rejection of truth in favor of interpretation (hermeneutics), his adoption of weak thought as a withdrawal from metaphysics, and his situational Marxism. |