Nietzschean Nihilism according to Vattimo

Abstract

Gianni Vattimo is an Italian postmodern and nihilistic philosopher and political activist. He is one of the most influential Italian and Western philosophers in the interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy. It was he who brought Nietzsche and Heidegger to the center of philosophical research in Italy in the late 1970s. Vatimo’s continuous dialogue with Nietzsche and the Nietzschean tradition is multifaceted. Of course, this aspect adds other branches to our study of Vatimo’s view of Nietzsche’s nihilism, including Vatimo’s discussion of hermeneutics, truth, and morality. The research also shows that the Nietzsche discussed by Vatimo is closer to an Italian Vatimo than to French or German philosophy. Vatimo’s interpretations of Nietzsche’s nihilism do not open the same philosophical doors as his contemporaries in the West. Because in Vatimo’s interpretations, Nietzsche presents himself as a revolutionary political and social philosopher and produces a new hermeneutics within Nietzsche’s nihilism called hermeneutical nihilism, which is linked to the discussions of modernity and postmodernity. To interpret nihilism according to Italian Nietzsche, we need to interpret the concept of weak thought, which is important to Vattimo. Because Vatimo’s concept of Nietzsche’s nihilism is related to other concepts of nihilism, therefore, in this research we will focus more on the aspect that Nietzsche’s nihilism according to Vatimo is the nihilism that makes Vatimo the Nietzsche of Italy. We have also reached several conclusions in the research, the most important of which is that the research is an attempt to investigate Nietzsche’s nihilism in Vatimo’s philosophy, which has opened the way for Vatimo to criticize Western modernity.Therefore, we ask: What are the metaphysical foundations of modern society that Vatimo rejects? What does the term postmodernism mean in Vatimo’s hermeneutic nihilism? To answer these questions, we will focus on three themes that are meaningful in Vatimo’s thought about Nietzsche’s nihilism: hermeneutics, postmodernism, and weak thought.