Abstract

Vattimo's intellectual trajectory unfolds from the monographic studies of the 1960s and early 1970s to texts such as, to mention only those available in the English translation, The End of Modernity and The Transparent Society. A sustained concern with the ethical and political implications of postmodern thought has led Vattimo, in his recent works, to focus in particular on the question of the possibility of interpretation, recollection, and communication in the fading of comprehensive metaphysical frameworks, and on the exploration of alternatives to transcendental or "bourgeois/christian" models of subjectivity. In the context of these reflections Vattimo has come to elaborate his felicitous diagnosis of the "weakness" of thought, and to revive the forgotten notion of pietas, strategically reintroduced into the discourse of hermeneutics in order to illuminate both the compassionate and demystifying dimensions of remembrance.