Work · Phenomenology & Hermeneutics
The End of Modernity
Reads Nietzsche’s nihilism and Heidegger’s “Verwindung” of metaphysics as the key to a postmodern culture without a single history or foundation.
Introduction
“The End of Modernity”, subtitled “Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Post-modern Culture”, appeared in 1985 and collects essays from the early 1980s. Vattimo argues that Nietzsche and Heidegger hold the key to the debate about the postmodern: Nietzsche’s nihilism, in which the highest values devalue themselves, and Heidegger’s idea that metaphysics cannot be overcome but only accepted, twisted and got over (Verwindung). The end of modernity is therefore not a new beginning beyond it, which would repeat the modern cult of the new, but the dissolution of the idea of history as unitary progress. Chapters on art, truth, hermeneutics and the end of history describe a culture of plural interpretations shaped by the mass media. The book was translated into English (1988) and German (1990) and became a standard reference in debates on philosophical postmodernism.
More works by Gianni Vattimo
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