After Christianity by Gianni Vattimo (PDF)

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What has been the fate of Christianity since Nietzsche’s famous announcement of the “death of God”? What is the possibility of religion, specifically Christianity, thriving in our postmodern era? In this provocative new book, Gianni Vattimo, leading Italian philosopher, politician, and framer of the European constitution, addresses these critical questions. When Vattimo was asked by a former teacher if he still believed in God, his reply was, “Well, I believe that I believe.” This paradoxical declaration of faith serves as the foundation for a brilliant exposition on Christianity in the new millennium―an age characterized by a deep uncertainty of opinion―and a personal account of how Vattimo himself recovered his faith through Nietzsche and Heidegger. He first argues that secularization is in fact the fulfillment of the central Christian message, and prepares us for a new mode of Christianity. He then explains that Nietzsche’s thesis concerns only the “moral god” and leaves room for the emergence of “new gods.” Third, Vattimo claims that the postmodern condition of fragmentation, anti-Eurocentrism, and postcolonialism can be usefully understood in light of Joachim of Fiore’s thesis concerning the “Spiritual Age” of history. Finally, Vattimo argues for the idea of “weak thought.” Because philosophy in the postmetaphysical age can only acknowledge that “all is interpretation,” that the “real” is always relative and not the hard and fast “truth” we once thought it to be, contemporary thought must recognize itself and its claims as “weak” as opposed to “strong” foundationalist claims of the metaphysical past. Vattimo concludes that these factors make it possible for religion and God to become a serious topic for philosophy again, and that philosophy should now formally engage religion.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: From Booklist Vattimo says both Nietzsche’s proclamation of God’s death and Heidegger’s of the end of metaphysics have contributed critically to the postmodern resurgence of religion. The death of God allows philosophy to engage religion in a pluralistic world by eliminating the need for philosophical atheism, with its paradoxical affirmation-by-denial of God. Indeed, God’s death obviates the proclamation of any absolute (hence the end of metaphysics), and that is consistent with a Christianity centered on love, as in Augustine’s injunction, “love, and do what you will.” Such a Christianity “takes the shape of hospitality” and “must limit itself almost entirely to listening,” thereby “giving voice to the guests.” In a time when xenophobic conflicts proliferate, it is refreshing to see a politically engaged philosopher–Vattimo is a member of the European Parliament–articulate a philosophy that is realized in hospitality. If his proposal that the museum be taken as a “symbolic model of democracy” seems rather odd, it still prompts rethinking democracy as the substance of Christianity metamorphoses “from universality to hospitality.” Steven SchroederCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Review This volume presents a philosophical inquiry as well as a personal account of the way in whcih the author recovered his faith through the works of Nietzsche and Heidegger. ― Journal of Contemporary ReligionVattimo can certainly sling it with the best of his fellow European philosophes. ― San Francisco Bay GuardianIn this remarkable book, Gianni Vattimo engages in an unyielding analysis of the state of life in the West after Christianity. — W. David Hall ― Journal of Religion About the Author Gianni Vattimo is emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Turin and a member of the European Parliament. His books with Columbia University Press are Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith: A Dialogue (with René Girard), Not Being God: A Collaborative Autobiography, Art’s Claim to Truth, After the Death of God, Dialogue with Nietzsche, The Future of Religion (with Richard Rorty), Nihilism and Emancipation: Ethics, Politics, and the Law, and After Christianity. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐We might ask: if we already understand the neo-left post-modern position; why is another source acceptable or necessary. The answer: only if offers genuine new content!! Vattimo does just that and should not be ignored or simply integrated into a summarized stance on postmodern thought. He is the first to address the unexplored unconscious and offer the correct emotional undertones of the postmodern movement: Freud’s understanding of the unconscious; Hegel’s overwhelming influence in offering the incarnation as god’s self-emptying process (yes, finally, a postmodern admits that it is Hegel in the background all along. Of course; they don’t like his ontology, but vattimo admits his significant influence. And the 3rd emotive contribution is the disintegration of the colonized nations dominated by a Christian influence (the Zeitgeist thing). All of these three set up an emotional unconscious base. In deconstruction; we are to deconstruct literal interpretation of the bible and deconstruct violence. His reconstruction finally addresses what other postmoderns have assumed but not articulated: the language triad of sign-concept-metaphor. This is a reminder of Hegel’s concept of counter-blow which said that we must return out of conceptual certainty back into the aesthetic for a genuine expression of truth. And this is what vattimo wants: an aesthetic dissolution of the rigid contours of reality in order to actualize the divine horizon offered in a “handing-over” in critical historical moments. The wealth of “new” material here pushes this book to 5 stars easily and nothing less. Vattimo should not be skipped or you will miss subtle key points for understanding the neo-left postmoderns.

⭐Vattimo fundamentally presents us with a false dichotomy between “strong thought” and “weak thought.” It is important to know that what he understands as “metaphysics” is only what the European Enlightenment understands as metaphysics. Under this title, “metaphysics,” he goes on to label the rest of history as just that without making the distinctions needed. He precisely does violence by generalizing in this way.

⭐Gianni Vattimo, who was raised as a Roman Catholic and still “believes that he believes”, doesn’t spare his criticisms toward the Catholic Church. Although he acknowledges the decisive role that Pope John Paul II has played in the collapse of communism, he considers that the official teachings of the Catholic Church are marked by authoritarianism and a refusal to engage the pluralist modern world.He is not happy with the positions the Church maintains on several contemporary issues. The sexual morality preached by priests, which forbids the use of condoms in the epoch of the spread of AIDS and condemns homosexuality as going against nature, appears to him as running counter to the Christian values of love and charity. Provocatively, he points out that this vision of sexuality considered mainly, or exclusively, as a means of reproduction, “involves considerably less respect and attention for the other than the ludic, seductive, and aesthetic sexuality of Don Juan.” Likewise, he notes that “what did lead Jesus to choose men as apostles, and still leads to the interdiction of women’s ordination in the Catholic Church, is women’s social condition of inferiority. At the time of Christ this inferiority was widespread and taken for granted. Today it is just a vestige of the past that is assumed by the Catholic Church to be an eternal norm of nature consecrated by the actual choices of Jesus”.More generally, it seems to him that the Catholic Church’s rejection of secular values and its affirmation as a polemical alternative to modernity, which characterize neo-fundamentalist and communitarian trends in the Church, are ultimately untenable. If Christians, or rather Catholics in Europe, present themselves as “strong identities” and insist on their distinctiveness, then they can only generate a backlash from liberal societies that will further limit the visibility of all religious symbols in civic life, as was recently illustrated by the interdiction to wear headscarves and other ostentatious religious signs in French public schools. In the end, notes the author, “this would ultimately force us to close most Western museums and to renounce the very cultural traditions of the West, which are so thick with–and inseparable from–religious symbols.”Instead, according to Vattimo, Christians should espouse secularization enthusiastically as the paradoxical realization of Christianity’s messianic mission. He advances two basic arguments to sustain this claim. First, in practical terms, the notion of secularity, like liberal capitalism or the idea of human rights, has a distinct religious origin. As the author justly notes, “European society is on average lay and secularized, but in terms of an explicit Christian heritage. This becomes clear when confronting persons or groups rooted in different traditions, who perceive our secularity as deeply marked by a specific religious origin.”This Christian heritage should be recognized as such, not to emphasize Europe’ specificity, but to engage other cultures in a spirit of hospitality. For all the critics who denounce Eurocentrism and colonialism in the missionary zeal, Christianity should not forget that among the features of its heritage there is also universalism, namely the awareness of a plurality of cultures and of a lay space where these can confront one another. This precious heritage, born out of the terrifying experience of the European religious wars, brings an invaluable contribution in today’s world marked by intolerance and conflicting identities.Second, and more fundamentally, Vattimo sees a family resemblance (Max Weber would have said: an elective affinity) between the biblical message of God’s incarnation and the dissolution of the sacred that characterizes the modern process of civilization. The emptying out of divine power and the abasement God undergoes by incarnating as Christ echoes what the Italian philosopher characterizes as the end of metaphysics and the move “from a conception of Being as structure to one of Being as event characterized by a tendency toward weakening.” It is under such ontological weakening that a return to Christianity is made possible. If God can no longer be upheld as an ultimate foundation, as the absolute metaphysical structure of the real, it is possible, once again, to believe in God.

⭐Vattimo’s “After Christianity” could be titled “After Blumenberg”. Of course I am referring to Hans Blumenberg’s “The Legitimacy of the Modern Age”. Blumenberg’s thesis, as I found it relevant for the philosophy of relgion, is that the secularization that occurs in Modern philosophy is a direct result of William of Ockhams’emphasis upon radical divine omnipotence combined with a form of realist skepticism. Hence, secularization is the result of Christianity’s internal incoherence. The modern age is hence a legitimate construct independent of Christian theology.Vattimo argues almost the exact opposite. The secularization of European culture, YES! European Culture, is the result of the kenotic emptying of the Christian God in Christ. The increased generalization, abstraction, and emptying the concept of God that characterizes Modernity is not the result of Christianity’s internal incoherence. Just the opposite, not only is Modernity’s secularization and its emptying all the content from the concept of God coherent with Christianity, but also the “postmodern” (here Vattimo means nihilism) condition is a coherent development of the workings of Christianity’s kenotic God.I’ll leave you to “After Christianity” to figure out how Vattimo pulls this off and what he thinks its implications are. The signficance of Vattimo for contemporary philosophy of religion cannot be overrated. Certainly his works raises major questions about theological movements like “Radical Orthodoxy” and the theology of John Milbank.

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