AT A CERTAIN HOUR Vattimo, Gianni
Not Being God,
05/2009
Book Chapter
Now I’ve gone back to being a libero, or “sweeper” in soccer parlance: in the newspapers, in Italy, around the world. Back to thinking, elaborating, writing. Being a university professor. I wouldn’t ...want that to be forgotten, because it’s not something residual to me. It’s my job, my primary commitment.
Indeed, I’d like to be remembered as a professor who was generous and accessible, the way Pareyson was with me. I try. I strive to be accessible and welcoming. But I don’t believe I’ll ever succeed in supervising anyone the way Pareyson supervised me.
When he died, fifteen years ago
THE MOVEMENT Vattimo, Gianni
Not Being God,
05/2009
Book Chapter
Becoming a Maoist (I say this half in jest and half seriously), discovering that as a Heideggerian I was also a Hegelian-Marxist, didn’t make me a convert to the student movement overnight. Far from ...it.
My stance as an anticapitalist romantic made me think: the capitalist world is a big rubbish heap, but these people here, these well-bred students, will never change anything, much less make the revolution.
And to be honest, the slogans that got them worked up made me laugh. For example: “We want university departments, not institutes.” Laugh? No, that was really stupid. Okay, the institutes were
PORTA PALAZZO Vattimo, Gianni
Not Being God,
05/2009
Book Chapter
I’ve never taken myself too seriously. And—Sergio always criticized me for this—I’ve never had a particular predilection for details, and so never taken much care over them. I haven’t kept a diary. I ...envy Alessandro Galante Garrone, whose biography I read recently. He always wrote everything down, day by day, minute by minute. A great historian, of himself too. Not me. I don’t even have a complete archive of the things I have written, or that others have written about me. Now that my students Mario Cedrini, Alberto Martinengo, and Santiago Zabala are organizing the publication of my
I haven’t yet told you why and in what sense and in what way I was a Catholic, from age twelve to age twenty-four or twenty-five. But I know that I stopped being one when I no longer read the Italian ...newspapers. My religious commitment was so much interwoven with my philosophical and political commitment that, when I lost contact with Italian politics, boom, it was all over, painlessly, just like it began. Even if a lot of passion was consumed in the interval.
After graduating, I won the prestigious Humboldt Fellowship for two consecutive years. So I went to
There isn’t much to tell about my firsthand political experience as a member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2004: the lunch where Gad Lerner and Luciano Segre proposed that I run, the ...slightly hypocritical maneuverings of Romano Prodi, the telephone call from Massimo D’Alema, a letter from me to which Piero Fassino didn’t even deign to respond with a raspberry, the telephone calls from Antonio Di Pietro every half hour, the improprieties of Marco Rizzo’s stooges. . . .
For the subhistorical record: in the Turin district I was elected on the Left Democratic slate, together with Bruno
Hegel used to say: decide to get married first, then look for a wife. That’s how it was with Gianpiero. A choice. Just as my sister’s marriage was a rational choice, following an unhappy grand ...passion.
If you marry for passion, it ends badly.
Before him, apart from Julio, I had had “friends.” But they were those terrifying things I did at night. In hiding. Even from myself. My heart was in pieces when Julio left.
A friend introduced me to Gianpiero. From then on, until his death, for twenty-four years, we were always together.
He wasn’t even twenty, thirteen
Weak thought was officially born in autumn 1979, and that same winter I met Richard Rorty, a philosopher and a friend who became increasingly important for me.
I was invited to a meeting on the ...postmodern at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee (that’s right, Jeffrey Dahmer’s town).
Richard Rorty heard me speak and told me, “I’d like a copy of your paper.” I was flattered. But better yet, he gave me a copy of his book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.
I went back to Italy, finished my lectures at the university, left for Santorini on vacation, and
I was already approaching these themes after having written La società trasparente, to the point that when a second edition was under consideration, I added a chapter on “the limits of ...derealization.”
The idea is: let’s move toward a society in which image and reality are indistinguishable—the image given me by interpretation, that is.
At the same time technology—and about this Adorno, the philosopher I was thinking of working on after I graduated, and whom Pareyson, God bless him, steered me away from, might be right—is headed toward such possibilities of control that it is unlikely that
JOACHIM OF FIORE Vattimo, Gianni
Not Being God,
05/2009
Book Chapter
In 2005 I was invited to run for mayor of San Giovanni in Fiore, in Calabria, the Calabria where I had roots.
In something I’d written, I had referred to Gioacchino da Fiore (Joachim of Fiore). Down ...there they have an institute of Gioacchino studies, a small journal on Gioacchino, and so on, and as soon as someone refers to Gioacchino they are all thrilled: our numbers have swollen by one!
I went in September 2004 and found a group of really sharp young people. In the parish hall we talked about so many things: culture, theater, the future, philosophy.
THE TWO BOYS Vattimo, Gianni
Not Being God,
05/2009
Book Chapter
Sergio Mamino came from Mondovì. He was passionate about art, and to study art at that time you had to enroll in the faculty of letters and philosophy. He had discovered that his president was openly ...gay, and he wanted to meet me. He had also discovered that I lived up on the hill and had sent me a postcard at Valsalice from a vacation spot. I couldn’t figure out who this Sergio was who was writing me.
Then in Turin he showed up in person. Meanwhile Gianpiero and I had moved to the attic in Via Mazzini. Sergio lived
