Customer Reviews

The End of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Postmodern Culture (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Vattimo continues to issue his argument for a soft-ontology after metaphysics has suffered from the end of absolutes. The end is nothing...nihilism. I am convinced that Vattimo and others like him are correct in accessing our age as technocratic nihilism but I am not convinced that Vattimo's soft-ontology is much more than a "practical" excuse to live as though there is meaning even though tying life to shared experience is impossible. The only real impossibility is that life is impossible. Is a new motivation for innovation and culture possible if we admit with Vattimo that nihilism "gesture[s] toward a new human experience" (26)? I am not convinced that he demonstrates this. Instead I see Vattimo arguing for a kind of soft-ontology that attempts to balance the reification of objective language with the broader givens of life experience that are coordinated in forms of life. Although I am not convinced of Vattimo's vision for life and society after nihilism I do think this book is worthy of a serious read.

This book is important to understand postmodernism. However, i don't image american readers accepting Vattimo's tesis about weak subjet right to have a place in world. Why modern civilization has impossed to us the obligation of being strong and the first in every action as the only way to be allowed as a member of this society?