Vattimo Quotes & Sayings

Amongst the many definitions, there is one that may be generally agreed upon: modernity is the epoch in which simply being modern became a decisive value in itself. — Gianni Vattimo

Hermeneutics is a way of looking at Being as an inheritance that is never considered as ultimate data. Capitalism has always grown by considering, or forcing another to consider, as a 'natural' possession what is inherited. The great dominating families are really the inheritors of the strongest pirates, thieves, and bandits, and they consider themselves entitled to command through a divine or natural law, when they really are only the result of a forgotten 'violence'. — Gianni Vattimo

Tradition is the transmitting of linguistic messages that constitute the horizon within which Dasein is thrown as a historically determined project: and tradition derives its importance from the fact that Being, as a horizon of disclosure in which things appear, can arise only as a trace of past words or as an announcement that has been handed down to us. — Gianni Vattimo

the dissolution of reality in interpretation is also an (act of) interpretation, which puts the historicity of the interpreter into play, and is not a discovery or a shedding of light onto a past error that would be uncovered on the basis of an objective awareness of the facts. — Gianni Vattimo

I am a Christian, therefore I am a communist. — Gianni Vattimo

The Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo makes a similar point to Rorty: "We don't reach agreement when we have discovered the truth," he observes; "we say we have discovered the truth when we reach agreement. — Stephen Batchelor

It is only thanks to God that I'm an atheist — Gianni Vattimo