Beyond Metaphysics: Gianni Vattimo and the meaning of hermeneutics for political theory
To appear in Philosophy and Social Criticism
Abstract
This paper examines Gianni Vattimo’s contribution to the recent turn to ontology in political theory. Drawing on Nietzsche and Heidegger, Vattimo offers a ‘philosophy of history’ in which strong metaphysical claims are presented as gradually being weakened, but in which the irrationalism he thinks characteristic of many anti-foundationalist theorists is also avoided. This philosophy is said to provide for new understandings of ethical and political life which have the acceptance of pluralism as their aim. The paper argues that Vattimo’s attempt to identify a position beyond metaphysics on the one hand and relativism on the other is unsuccessful, and that he ought to join in with the thoroughgoing anti-foundationalism that marks the work of writers such as Rorty and Derrida. It suggests further that awareness of our historical situation need not weaken the confidence with which our beliefs are held, and does not support any particular political programme.
Keywords
Gianni Vattimo, the ontological turn, metaphysics, anti-foundationalism, hermeneutics, democracy, pluralism.
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Introduction
Recent work in political thought has often sought to theorise without reference to controversial metaphysical ideas, claiming, in the oft-quoted words of John Rawls, to ‘stay on the surface’ philosophically.
1 Rawls famously turned his back on the dominant approach in
Western thought, in which political theory is seen as a branch of ethics which applies the results of moral philosophy to political institutions. Rawls thinks that political theory must not rely on controversial philosophical ideas but instead draw upon shared values and histories. However, this approach has in turn been subject to criticism. An important objection is that metaphysics and ontology cannot be set aside as easily as Rawls and others claim, for the reason that their presuppositions remain in our thinking even when we do not make reference to them. In the light of what it takes to be the inescapability of some philosophical commitments, participants in what has become known as the ‘ontological turn’ take their task to be that of investigating those commitments directly.
2
In Sustaining
Affirmation , a study of the ontological turn, Stephen White writes: ‘The recent ontological shift might ... be categorised generally as the result of a growing propensity to interrogate more carefully those “entities” presupposed by our typical ways of seeing and doing in the modern world’.
3
This paper examines Vattimo’s contribution to the ontological turn.
4 Vattimo presents an interpretation of the history of Western thought, which he sees as divided between metaphysical and historical approaches. Vattimo’s own approach is avowedly historical, drawing on the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics. In his work he sketches what he calls
2

a ‘philosophy of history’, an account of why metaphysics has played so central a part in the history of the West but which also explains why its hold over us is (as he believes) gradually being weakened. At the same time, Vattimo argues that hermeneutics does not result in
‘irrationalism, relativism and traditionalism’, 5
where there is nothing to be said to differentiate between the various interpretations that might be given of our history.
The paper begins by outlining Vattimo’s hermeneutic philosophy of history and its relation to metaphysics. It then questions his success in steering a course which moves beyond metaphysics and cultural relativism. He claims that historical events can only be understood in terms of the Heideggerian account of the ‘weakening of Being’ he presents, and that other interpretations, for example ones that highlight ‘strong’ national and religious identities, are not persuasive. But precisely why these interpretations are unpersuasive is not explained adequately, and it is suggested that Vattimo ought to see himself to be closer to avowedly anti-foundationalist writers such as Derrida and Rorty than he allows. The paper then takes up Vattimo’s ethical and political views. Ethically, he holds that awareness of our historical situation leads us to hold our convictions tentatively and (in his preferred term) weakly. In politics, the absence of a metaphysical conception of truth is held to justify democracy and to demonstrate the legitimacy of pluralism. Against these proposals, it is suggested that awareness of the historical contingency of belief need not affect the strength of the conviction with which they are held, or justify any particular set of political institutions.
Vattimo’s hermeneutic history of Western thought
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Vattimo’s understanding of ontology can best be understood by locating it in the context of his interpretation of the history of Western thought. He presents that history as dividing into two distinct approaches, metaphysical and historical. The former sees the world as fixed and given, which it takes its task to grasp objectively, whereas the latter views the world as presenting a diversity of ways in which it might be interpreted.
Metaphysics has of course dominated Western philosophy since Plato. In Vattimo’s words, metaphysics is ‘the belief in an objective world order, which must be recognized so that thought might conform with its descriptions of reality and its moral choices’.
6
Vattimo’s understanding of metaphysics is derived from Heidegger, who argued that metaphysics stems from neglecting the historical origins of belief; in his terms, it rests on the ‘forgetting of
Being’.
7 Insofar as metaphysicians might claim to have succeeded in their aim of identifying an objective world order, they have merely reified the circumstances of particular times, forgetting their contingent origins and treating them as fixed and eternal. Vattimo draws on
Heidegger to provide an account of why it is that metaphysics has been so prominent, and how it has impacted upon our understandings of ourselves, our relations to one another and to the world. On his presentation, the metaphysician thinks it important that our beliefs are shown to be more than the contingent result of history and tradition. She is animated by fear of ‘subjectivism’, the view that without fixing our beliefs on the foundation of an objective world order we are unable to demonstrate their validity or demonstrate their superiority over alternatives.
8
Vattimo objects not to the possibility of identifying metaphysical foundations for belief but to the consequences of thinking that one has done so. According to him, metaphysics encourages certainty and tempts us to view the world in rigid, absolutist terms. As such it
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does violence to thinking, with metaphysicians maintaining that an order to the world exists to which we must subscribe and that alternatives are mistaken and therefore legitimate targets of censure. For this reason metaphysics is appropriately the subject of concern by theorists such as Rawls. Vattimo writes:
Our tradition is dominated by the idea that if we only had a stable foundation we could move and act more freely. But philosophical foundationalism does not promote freedom. Rather, it is for the purpose of obtaining some desired effect or of consolidating some authority. When someone wants to tell me the absolute truth it is because he wants to put me under his control, under his command.
9
It can be objected to Vattimo’s presentation that it is not metaphysics that is violent; rather, violence stems from the dogmatic, even fanatical, confidence that it may encourage but does not mandate.
10
Vattimo does not make this distinction, though he sometimes acknowledges that metaphysics is not necessarily violent. However, he thinks that the largescale violence characteristic of the European wars of religion and, more recently, of the
Holocaust, are instances of strong, metaphysical, ontology. Such ontologies encourage us to contrast our supposedly fixed and pure identities with those of others, seeing them not simply as different but as opposed to us. In a stark illustration, Vattimo writes: ‘If Hitler had merely hated the Jews in his neighborhood, he would have set fire to their houses, and that would have been it. But he worked up a general theory to the effect that they were an inferior race and that it would be better to eliminate them completely’.
11
Vattimo’s concerns about metaphysics makes common cause with the antifoundationalism shared by deconstruction, pragmatism and varieties of post-modernism, all
5

of which hold that metaphysical foundations for belief are not available to us. Antifoundationalism does not deny that there are foundations for belief, but holds that foundations are rooted in history rather than in a metaphysical source independent of that history.
12
Despite their shared opposition to metaphysics, however, there are important differences between Vattimo and anti-foundationalist writers such as Derrida and Rorty. By thinking foundations for belief are historically contingent, Vattimo argues that it is important to examine our history much more closely than these philosophers tend to do. He argues that they fail to recognise the way in which metaphysics has taken hold of us – and continues so to do even if we take ourselves to oppose it. ‘We cannot take it [metaphysics] off like a piece of clothing or discard it like a notion we have come to recognize as mistaken because it is the precondition of our every act of thought and determines the very structure of the language we hope to use to get free of it’.
13 Our task should be to examine metaphysics, accounting for the reasons that it emerged, why it has taken the forms it has, and why it continues to exert a hold over us.
Vattimo encapsulates the difference between his position and that of writers such as
Rorty and Derrida in terms he takes over from Nietzsche. According to Vattimo, the latter are what Nietzsche called incomplete nihilists .
14
They embrace Nietzsche’s claim that ‘there are no truths, only interpretations’, but go no further. For them, setting metaphysics asides results in simply a plurality of interpretation with no means to establish their worth or validity;
Vattimo criticises what he describes as their merely ‘creative-poetic, or even purely narrative, way of philosophizing’, philosophy that amounts to nothing more than giving voice to one’s subjective preferences.
15
In contrast, Vattimo presents himself as a complete nihilist , one who moves beyond this choice imposed by metaphysics by accepting Nietzsche’s further thought that the claim that there are no truths only interpretations is itself an interpretation. For the
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complete nihilist, interpretation is not simply a subjective preference but is validated by reference to the history. Rorty for example supports the idea of a liberal society which aims at solidarity and the diminution of cruelty, but without an understanding of our history Vattimo argues that there is nothing to explain or justify such a society.
If someone (I am thinking of Rorty) were to say to me that there is no need to speak of the history of Being to explain my preference for a world where solidarity and respect for others prevail, rather than a war of all against all, I would object that even from the perspective of solidarity and respect it is important to become aware of the roots of our preferences. Indeed, an ethics of respect and solidarity can become reasonable, precise in what is says and capable of holding its own in conversation with others precisely by relating itself explicitly to its provenance.
16
In his work Vattimo draws not on pragmatism or deconstructionism but on the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics. Explaining the difference, he writes: ‘hermeneutics is not just antifoundationalism plus interpretation in conflict. It also entails a philosophy of history (even if only the philosophy of history of the end of the philosophy of history) which views hermeneutics as the result of a “nihilistic” process, in which metaphysical Being, meaning violence, consumes itself’.
17
The idea of a ‘philosophy of history’ suggests a teleological view closely associated with metaphysics.
18
However, Vattimo’s philosophy of history is an account of how metaphysics has gradually come to be weakened. He takes that history to have been sketched by Nietzsche in his account of how ‘the “true world” finally became a fable’ .
The ‘true world’ is that offered by Plato in his theory of the Forms, and in
Christianity it is the world offered us after death. Gradually the true world came to be thought
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less and less attainable; in Kant the noumenal world (the world as it is in itself, independent of the descriptions we give of it) is forever beyond us. Today the idea of the ‘true’ world has become a useless notion, one which should be abolished, pointing to the inescapability of interpretation. In Vattimo’s summary: ‘The “true world” that becomes a fable ... in no sense gives way to a more profound and reliable truth; it gives way to a play of interpretations that is presented philosophically, in its turn, as no more than an interpretation’.
19
A plurality of interpretations?
Vattimo’s account of the weakening of metaphysical Being is attractive in many respects, offering an interpretation of our history which is said to commit us neither to metaphysics nor relativism. However, I want to question how far Vattimo succeeds in steering a course beyond these positions. We can do so if we consider further his interpretation of history as one of steady progression from metaphysics to non-metaphysics and note that other interpretations of history, and of the role of metaphysics within it, are available. For example, rather than see history as a linear narrative of the weakening of Being, we might see it as one of cycles, in which moments of weak belief alternate periodically with the return of stronger forms.
20
In the light of the plurality of available interpretations, the question arises of on what basis Vattimo can assert the validity of his? In a paper addressed to this point, Paolo Flores d’Arcais doubts that we can do so unless we invoke metaphysical criteria of the kind Vattimo claims to move beyond. D’Arcais writes: ‘There are innumerable “fables” of modernity; this is certain. But no fable can prove another one wrong: they all co-exist in the limbo of a common undecidability, unless there is a criterion given from a higher level, from all of
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which these “fables” recognized as binding and cogent, on the basis of which to decide when one “belies” the other and when it does not’.
21
Vattimo allows for the existence of other ‘fables’, and yet would resist D’Arcais’ conclusion that metaphysical criteria are the only means to judge between them. He presents his hermeneutic ‘fable’ as ‘the most persuasive philosophical interpretation’ of our history.
22
History is not simply a series of past events but an order structured around a philosophical understanding of the direction of those events, and his claim is that his interpretation accounts for them more persuasively than other narratives. However, if this is what Vattimo is saying, his argument runs into difficulties, which can be seen by recalling his commitment to
Nietzsche’s view that ‘there are no facts, only interpretations’. In saying this Nietzsche does not mean to deny the existence of facts; the claim rather is that facts emerge and are established in the course of offering interpretations. In order consistently to adhere to this view, Vattimo cannot claim that his interpretation of our history is more persuasive than others because it most accurately describes our historical moment, for the reason that his hermeneutic attempt to move beyond metaphysics entails that our understanding of that moment is itself the result of a particular interpretation. Its persuasiveness, then, is relative, one most likely to be felt by those sympathetic to his Heideggerian narrative.
23
This point can be made more concrete with an illustration. Vattimo’s ‘fable’ centres on the weakening of metaphysical Being, but it might be argued that a more persuasive interpretation would address itself to the continued presence of metaphysical belief. In an essay comparing Vattimo’s writings on religious belief with those of Richard Rorty, Nancy
Frankenberry calls attention to one of the most striking phenomena of the last few decades,
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the rise and flourishing of varieties of fundamentalism. In this context, Frankenberry refers to what she describes as the most notable omission in the recent philosophical rethinking of religion, namely, its failure to theorize the resurgence of unweakened traditional religious belief manifested “on the ground,” rather than in postmodern philosophical texts. The prevalence of literal, nonhermeneutical, and nonprivatized forms of religion constitutes an obvious and overwhelming exception to any secularization thesis.
24
A persuasive account of the weakening of Being must account for these strongly metaphysical varieties of faith, explaining why they persist and indeed have grown in recent years.
Vattimo is of course aware of the existence of religious and other forms of fundamentalism, but his explanation of them is one which itself might plausibly be challenged. It is not open to him to argue that these various fundamentalisms are irrational, because he associates rationalism with the metaphysical tradition and accordingly dismisses it. Rather, his claim is that fundamentalism is not a persuasive interpretation of our historical moment because religious and other fundamentalists are merely a reactionary response to the process of weakening; he writes of what he describes as the ‘widespread tendency in the modern world to react to Babel and postmodern pluralism by recuperating strong identities
(ethnicity, religion, and class, even lobbies and political cliques of various kinds)’.
25
However, this explanation presumes Vattimo’s Heideggerian philosophy of history, and as such simply pushes back one stage the question of why should this be seen as the most persuasive understanding of recent events? It is only if one is persuaded to some such history
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will one accept that these forms of fundamentalism are ‘reactive’, rather than (as fundamentalists themselves see it) constituting an advance on the ills of contemporary secularism.
None of this would constitute an objection to Vattimo were he happy to accept that there is no single persuasive interpretation of our history. For writers such as Derrida and
Rorty, the diversity of interpretations that we find is to be expected: people offer different interpretations because they think from within different sets of presumptions, which in turn lead to different understandings of the shape of history. We have seen however that Vattimo seeks to distance himself from such writers precisely on this point, criticising them because they allow for nothing more than ‘antifoundationalism plus interpretation in conflict’. The issue then is whether it is possible to steer a course which moves beyond metaphysics on the one hand, and relativism on the other?
I do not think that it is. D’Arcais seems to me largely correct when he writes:
One cannot escape this dilemma: either there exists a criterion by which to choose one interpretation over another, one that avoids the anarchic confusion but supplies a criterion that is (metaphysical) truth and not interpretation, or this criterion does not exist, and consequently everything is really interpretation (including this affirmation) but unavoidably (in its turn a truth, above all!) there is anarchistic confusion (which closes the discussion on preference, and entrusts it to the contingent facticity of the battle among wills to power).
26
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The dilemma D’Arcais describes is, in Vattimo’s Nietzschean terms, a manifestation of incomplete nihilism, holding that there no way beyond the alternatives of metaphysics or relativism. However, D’Arcais is I think correct that there is no alternative available. This is evidenced if we note an ambiguity that can be seen to run through Vattimo’s writings. When discussing metaphysics he is clear that ‘everything is really interpretation’. But when writing against what he thinks the subjectivism and relativism of philosophers such as Rorty and
Derrida, his failure to allow for more than one persuasive interpretation, or even to acknowledge the existence of such a thing, points to metaphysical assumptions which (as
D’Arcais puts it) supply ‘a criterion by which to choose one interpretation over another’.
There is a way to resolve this ambiguity. However, were he to take it, Vattimo would have to accept that he is much closer to the position of writers such as Derrida and Rorty than he allows or wishes to be. To explain, although D’Arcais is correct to say that one must choose between metaphysics and the ubiquity of interpretation, we need not go on to agree with him that the latter commits us to ‘anarchistic confusion’ or to a ‘battle among wills to power’. This amounts to the subjectivism about which Vattimo is concerned, and against it we should note that for anti-foundationalists one’s ‘will’ is not subjective but is informed by factors beyond oneself, including such obvious but important things such as family, education and tradition. The resulting plurality of belief and interpretation need not be seen as anarchistic confusion. But it is to accept something that Vattimo resists, namely that in offering an interpretation of our history we must also allow that different, alternative histories are available, ones which reflect different sets of presumptions and which lead to different understandings of its shape.
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An ethic of finiteness
Vattimo’s concern with the violence associated with metaphysics is one shared by many theorists, but unlike these others he situates his response to it in an historical narrative which is said to demonstrate why the hold metaphysics has on us is being weakened. In works such as Nihilism and Emancipation and A Farewell to Truth his narrative of the weakening of
Being is presented to have important ethical and political consequences.
Vattimo argues that the historical perspective that we have inherited makes a difference to our beliefs. To be precise, it leads to a difference in how our beliefs are held ; as he puts it, it leads us to hold them with a ‘different cogency’.
27
We know that we are located in a particular social and historical context, know that had we been born in a different time and place our beliefs would themselves be different, and this knowledge is said properly to weaken the hold our beliefs have over us. These ideas come together in what Vattimo calls an
‘ethics of finiteness’ in which, rather than seeing different beliefs as threatening in the way that metaphysics encourages us to do, we recognise them to be equally contingent and thus equally legitimate. In this way, an ethics of finiteness provides both an explanation and a justification of the pluralism that we find in the world today: ‘An ethics of finiteness is one that strives to keep faith with the discovery of the always insuperably finite situatedness of one’s own provenance, while not forgetting the pluralistic implications of this discovery’.
28
Vattimo’s proposals for an ethic of finiteness are attractive, but key steps in his argument raise questions about his relation to the metaphysical tradition. He writes that the ethics of finitude ‘can be thought of as a stepping back, a distancing ourselves from the concrete choices and options that, in the near term and at short range, the situation seems to
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dictate’.
29
This invites the question of how exactly we might ‘step back’. Metaphysicians answer this question by claiming to identify a space to the side of our beliefs to which we can ascend and from which we might critically assess them in order to establish which ought to be affirmed. Vattimo’s opposition to metaphysics means that he cannot invoke such a perspective. What he seems to mean is that we have greater historical experience than our predecessors, and this wider perspective permits us to step back from the specific situation we confront. The question though is whether, as Vattimo claims, this appreciation of our
‘finite situatedness’ will in fact lead us to step back and hold our beliefs with a ‘different cogency’. Vattimo seems to assume that the force of one’s beliefs relax their hold once one comes to understand that those beliefs are historically situated. However, one can be fully aware that one’s beliefs are the result of historical contingency and socialisation without losing confidence in them.
30 It would be more consistent with the criticisms of metaphysics that Vattimo makes to say that there is no general relationship between the foundation of our beliefs – be that foundation seen to be either metaphysical or historically contingent – and those beliefs themselves.
31
It is because he assumes such a relationship that Vattimo thinks that an ethic of finiteness yields an aversion to violence and (as we will examine below) provides a reason to respect pluralism. But no particular conclusion can be read off from historical awareness, and it should not be thought to provide reasons either for or against the strength of conviction.
In saying this, I am not denying that we can examine the assumptions which frame our choices and options, or claiming that the kind of space metaphysics hopes to provide is required in order to do so. However, when we undertake such examination, this marks another movement within those choices and options, not movement from a ‘near term and short range’ context to something independent of it. Put otherwise, we cannot step back from
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our beliefs, only to step across to different beliefs; we might be moved to revise our choices and options, but when we do so we embrace some others, which are equally partial and perspectival. This is a point seen by other participants in the ‘ontological turn’. William
Connolly’s position is in some ways similar to that of Vattimo, but he is more careful to delineate what is entailed by anti-foundationalism on this point. For Connolly is clear that it is not possible to distance one’s beliefs from every standpoint; as he remarks, ‘every detachment from a particular mode of thought is also attachment to another’.
32
Vattimo argues that an appreciation of our historical situation has implications not just for our ethical views but for political life. He writes that ‘a weak ontology, or better an ontology of actuality, supplies philosophical reasons for preferring a liberal, tolerant, and democratic society rather than an authoritarian and totalitarian one’.
33 In the title of one of his recent books, when democracy finally bids ‘farewell to truth’, everything, including truth itself, is left to be established through democratic discussion: ‘the farewell to truth is the commencement, and the very basis, of democracy’.
34
However, to speak of the absence of metaphysical truth as the ‘very basis’ of democracy retains the foundationalist assumption that democracy requires justification by reference to a ‘basis’ beyond itself. It would be more consistent with Vattimo’s criticisms of metaphysics to say that there is no reason to think the absence of truth justifies democracy over any other political settlement.
35
The reason he thinks that is does is because he overestimates the role of truth in political life. This is evident in his analysis of the dangers posed by metaphysical theories of truth, and in his explanation of why he takes democracy to be in need of an alternative. In his view metaphysical conceptions of truth are opposed to pluralism, taking it that there is a single truth and that all departures from it are errors which
15

can legitimately be silenced; as he writes, ‘a democratic regime needs a non-objectivemetaphysical conception of truth; otherwise, it immediately becomes an authoritarian regime’.
36
However, coming to see metaphysics in the way Vattimo desires should entail giving up on the idea that democratic regimes need any conception of truth, be it metaphysical or non-metaphysical.
What motivates Vattimo’s attempt to identify such a basis for democracy is illustrated further in his criticisms of other anti-foundationalist writers. In a comment on Rorty, he writes that ‘I do not believe that pragmatism and neo-pragmatism supply sufficiently “strong” reasons to justify the choice of democracy, nonviolence, and tolerance’.
37
He thinks pragmatism deficient in this regard because no particular normative commitment follows from the simple empirical fact of pluralism; we might view that empirical fact as something worthy of respect, but equally we might take it to be a sign of error, one that ought to be corrected by coercion. However, although Vattimo is critical of pragmatism for its failure to offer robust justifications of democracy and of pluralism, the constraints on the philosophical interpretation of our historical moment that he identifies in his philosophy of history are themselves pragmatic ones – they include lessons from the past, experiences from other cultures, and so on. Pragmatism holds that metaphysical criteria for distinguishing better and worse beliefs and practices are not available to us, but this does not mean that we have no capacity at all to make that distinction. The decision about what or what not to tolerate is not justified metaphysically, but rather pragmatically, in terms of the concrete issues with which we are confronted.
38 For this reason Vattimo does not need to see himself as moving beyond the kind of anti-foundationalism of pragmatists like Rorty in order to offer a defence of democracy and of pluralism.
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To develop this last claim, I want briefly to contrast Vattimo’s ethic of finiteness with a position which is also animated by the aspiration to justify a set of political arrangements which respect pluralism, but which I think does so in a more satisfactory way. This is the political liberalism developed by John Rawls.
39
In his later works, Rawls addresses specific circumstances, namely the shared history of the wars of religion following the Protestant
Reformation. Rawls presents this legacy to raise the question of stability, of how agreement might be reached about the principles of a just society given a plurality of what he calls
‘comprehensive doctrines’. He argues that the fact of pluralism means that it would be illegitimate for the state to be justified by reference to any such doctrine. In contrast to the controversial nature of Vattimo’s claims about pluralism and his proposed justification of democracy, the philosophical abstemiousness of political liberalism has much to recommend it. Rather than attempting to respect pluralism with reference to the weakening of metaphysical belief, political liberalism views metaphysics as being, for politics, beside the point, taking its task rather to be to ensure that any such beliefs remain within the legitimate constraints of a pluralistic democracy. This presupposes something Vattimo does not allow for; that, as Rorty puts it, ‘politics can be separated from beliefs about matters of ultimate importance – that shared beliefs among citizens on such matters are not essential to a democratic society’.
40
This position seems to me plausible, and more likely to be persuasive to metaphysicians (for example, to the devoutly religious) than asking them to hold their beliefs weakly.
Conclusion
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Vattimo argues for the necessity of investigating history and understanding our historical moment if we are to avoid the dangers of both the metaphysical tradition and the relativism he thinks characteristic of many anti-foundationalist theorists. Historical investigation is said to support specific ethical and political ideals, namely an ethics of finiteness and a democracy which respects pluralism. This paper has argued that Vattimo’s attempt to avoid both metaphysics and relativism is not successful. He claims that historical events can only be understood in terms of the Heideggerian account of the ‘weakening of Being’ he presents, and that other interpretations, for example ones that highlight ‘strong’ national and religious identities, are not persuasive. But why these interpretations are unpersuasive is not explained adequately, and he is occasionally tempted by claims which on inspection turn out to be closer to the metaphysics that he wishes to avoid. My suggestion is that Vattimo ought to see himself as closer to anti-foundationalist writers such as Derrida and Rorty than he allows.
Further, it was argued that the weakening of metaphysics does not entail any particular approach to moral and political life, however attractive that approach might be. It does not necessarily make us more open and tolerant of pluralism, any more than (as Vattimo occasionally acknowledges) metaphysics necessarily leads to violence. Against his understanding of the relationship between philosophy and democracy, it was suggested that political liberalism is a better response to the controversies surrounding metaphysics than his hermeneutic ontology, and that it provides for a more satisfactory understanding of democracy and of pluralism.
Acknowledgements
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I am very grateful for comments from the anonymous reviewer for Philosophy and Social
Criticism . My thanks also go to Clayton Chin, Julia Gallagher, Neil Gascoigne, Anna
Hickey-Moody and Nathan Widder.
1
John Rawls, ‘Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical’, in Samuel Freeman (ed.)
Collected Papers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 394.
2 This is of course not the only objection that has been made about Rawls’ ‘method of avoidance’. A different criticism is that it is undesirable to set metaphysical thinking aside in this way. See Jean Hampton, ‘Should Political Philosophy Be Done without Metaphysics?’,
Ethics 99.4 (1989). Oliver Marchart examines important non-Rawlsian writers who have sought to move beyond metaphysics in his Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political
Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2007).
3 Stephen K. White, Sustaining Affirmation: the Strengths of Weak Ontology in Political
Theory (Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 4.
4
In Sustaining Affirmation White considers North American participants in the ontological turn. George Kateb, Charles Taylor, Judith Butler and William Connolly are all said to be weak ontologists , examining the historical contingency of understandings of selfhood and relations to others. In so doing they are opposed to what White calls strong, or metaphysical, ontology. In that text, White mentions Vattimo only once: ‘I have no idea whether Vattimo would find my elucidation of the characteristics of a felicitous weak ontology compatible with his own views’. White, Sustaining Affirmation , p. 7. In a later paper White touches on the their respective positions by taking issue with Vattimo’s notion of a ‘philosophy of history’. Stephen K. White, ‘Violence, Weak Ontology, and Late-Modernity’,
Political
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Theory 37.6 (2009), pp. 810 – 811. I take up Vattimo’s argument for such a history below.
The idea of ‘weak ontology’ is the focus of set of dialogues between White and his interlocutors in Sustaining Affirmation in a special issue of the Hedgehog Review 7.2 (2005).
Vattimo is not discussed there, and the present paper examines his distinctive contribution to the ontological turn.
5
Gianni Vattimo, Beyond Interpretation: The Meaning of Hermeneutics for Philosophy
(Cambridge: Polity, 1994), p. 78.
6
Gianni Vattimo, After Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), p. 13.
7 Gianni Vattimo, Nihilism and Emancipation: Ethics, Politics, and Law , edited by Santiago
Zabala (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 4.
8
Vattimo, Beyond Interpretation , p. 97.
9
Gianni Vattimo, ‘Toward a Nonreligious Christianity’, in Jeffrey W. Robbins (ed.) After the
Death of God (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 43.
10 In a defence of the role of metaphysics in political philosophy, Hampton argues that those who invoke truth to justify intolerance are not in fact committed to the truth but are ‘true believers’, people who attack not only opposing ideas but those who put them forward. ‘It is their blind faith, not their metaphysics, which results in discord and even war’. Hampton,
‘Should Political Philosophy Be Done without Metaphysics?’, p. 812.
11 Gianni Vattimo, A Farewell to Truth (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), p. 77.
12
Robert T. Valgenti writes: ‘foundations are inherited from a tradition but never accepted as truly foundational, since the taking up and appropriation of those historical foundations not only transforms them, but illustrates that foundations, as historical, are transformable’. Robert
T. Valegenti, ‘Weak Thought and the Recovery of Reason’, in Silvia Benso and Brian
Schrowder (eds.) Between Nihilism and Politics: The Hermeneutics of Gianni Vattimo
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(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), p. 67. White distinguishes between anti -foundationalists such as Vattimo and non -foundationalists such as himself. According to
White, anti-foundationalism is the view that there are no metaphysical foundations, whereas non-foundationalists make the more modest claim that no one has yet succeeded in identifying such foundations. White, ‘Violence, Weak Ontology, and Late-Modernity’, p.
811. However, it is not clear that Vattimo is committed to claiming categorically that there are no metaphysical foundations; as I have indicated, his focus is with what follows from thinking that one has knowledge of such things.
13 Vattimo, Nihilism and Emancipation , p. 72.
14
Vattimo, Nihilism and Emancipation , p. 40.
15
Vattimo, Nihilism and Emancipation , p. 97. In the case of Derrida, he writes: ‘Derrida never explains his reasons for choosing the themes he takes up; he offers the most brilliant meditations on terms and concepts that are loaded with philosophical history, which he reconstructs in an illuminating manner, yet without ever theorizing the “logical” necessity of taking up those topics in particular’. Vattimo,
Nihilism and Emancipation , p. 24.
16
Gianni Vattimo, Belief (Cambridge: Polity, 1999), pp. 44–45.
17
Vattimo, Nihilism and Emancipation , p. 94.
18
This is the reason why White finds Vattimo’s invocation of such a philosophy ‘rather stunning’. White, ‘Violence, Weak Ontology, and Late-Modernity’, p. 811.
19
Vattimo, Beyond Interpretation, p.
7.
20
For example, this is a theme of John Gray’s later, anti-humanist, writings. See John Gray,
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (London: Granta, 2002).
21

21
Paolo Flores D’Arcais, ‘Gianni Vattimo; or rather, Hermeneutics and the Primacy of
Politics’, in Santiago Zabala (ed.) Weakening Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Gianni
Vattimo (London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007), p. 262.
22 Vattimo, Beyond Interpretation , pp. 10 – 11.
23
Though even here it may not be found appealing. Rorty has written sympathetically about
Heidegger, but is not persuaded by his narrative of the weakening of Being. He writes:
‘Heidegger tried too hard to tie the fate of the West in with the fate of Western philosophy: he distorted the story he had to tell by centering it around the works of the great dead philosophers’. Richard Rorty, ‘Reply to Gianni Vattimo’, in Randall E. Auxier and Lewis
Edwin Hahn (eds.) The Philosophy of Richard Rorty (Illinois, Open Court, 2010), p. 586.
24 Nancy K. Frankenberry (2007) ‘Weakening Religious Belief: Vattimo, Rorty, and the
Holism of the Mental’, in Santiago Zabala (ed.)
Weakening Philosophy: Essays in Honour of
Gianni Vattimo (London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007), p. 281, emphasis in original.
25
Vattimo, Nihilism and Emancipation , p. 33.
26
D’Arcais, ‘Gianni Vattimo; or rather, Hermeneutics and the Primacy of Politics’, p. 261.
27
Vattimo, Nihilism and Emancipation , p. 46.
28
Vattimo, A Farewell to Truth , p. 96.
29 Vattimo, A Farewell to Truth , p. 93.
30
This point has been pressed by Stanley Fish. Fish remarks that one can be aware of the historical contingency of one’s beliefs and yet ‘be as authoritarian as anyone else (I am living proof), if, in the mundane context he presently occupies, he is absolutely sure of the rightness of his position (not the normative rightness, but the context-bound rightness)’. Stanley Fish,
22

‘Truth but No Consequences: Why Philosophy Doesn’t Matter’,
Critical Inquiry 29 (2003), p. 416.
31
In a critical remark directed at White’s distinction between strong and weak ontology,
Nathan Widder notes that ‘the history of Western thought is full of metaphysical ontologies that refuse to derive political and ethical certainties in this way [i.e. directly from those ontologies], just as anti-metaphysical and anti-foundationalist political philosophies can be extremely dogmatic’. Nathan Widder, Political Theory after Deleuze (London: Continuum,
2012), p. 10.
32 William E. Connolly, Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox
(London: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), p. 14.
33
Vattimo, Nihilism and Emancipation , p. 19.
34
Vattimo, A Farewell to Truth , p. xxxiv.
35
At one point Vattimo acknowledges that ‘a politics without “truth” is not exclusively and necessarily a democratic politics’. Vattimo, Nihilism and Emancipation , p. 84. But even here, he does not consider what this means for his argument by examining how it threatens his claim that the absence of truth provides the ‘very basis’ of democracy.
36
Gianni Vattimo, ‘The Age of Interpretation’, in Santiago Zabala (ed.) The Future of
Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), p. 50.
37 Vattimo, Nihilism and Emancipation , p. 19.
38
To give an illustration, British law exempts kosher and halal butchers from having to comply with the general law requiring that animals be stunned before being killed, despite this being seen by some as involving additional cruelty to ‘normal’ methods of butchery.
These exemptions can be seen as a response to the metaphysically-based beliefs of orthodox members of the Jewish and Muslim faiths, on the pragmatic basis that in this matter a
23

statutory overriding of faith-based custom would be disproportionate compared to the harm that those without such a faith basis might see in them. In other instances, such as female genital mutilation, the opposite decision has been made and the law has been used to make a faith-based practice illegal, precisely because those without such a faith basis see the practice as unacceptably abusive of those to whom it has traditionally been applied. Such examples show that democracies are able to make distinctions and act on them in the most robust way available, namely by making them illegal by due process, without needing to seek to draw upon a metaphysical basis.
39 John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York, Columbia University Press, 1996). See also
Richard Rorty, ‘The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy’, in his
Objectivity, Relativism and
Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Charles Larmore, ‘The Moral
Foundations of Political Liberalism’, Journal of Philosophy 96 (1999): 599 – 625.
40
Rorty, ‘The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy’, p. 175. We might ask whether this separation itself brings with it ontological commitments. Although Rorty and Rawls eschew reference to ontology, as Charles Larmore has suggested there is no need for political liberals to deny that appeals to the idea of a shared duty to respect fair terms of cooperation constitutes an ontology.
Larmore argues that this commitment is to what he calls a ‘thin ontology’, one which does not challenge anyone’s comprehensive doctrine but asks them to not invoke such doctrines when justifying the basic arrangements of society. Larmore, ‘The
Moral Foundations of Political Liberalism’. Charles Larmore, ‘Respect for Persons’,
The
Hedgehog Review 7.2 (2005).
24