Gianni Vattimo 1936 – 2023

Gianteresio Vattimo, known as Gianni Vattimo, was an Italian philosopher and politician and the principal architect of what he called pensiero debole, weak thought. A pupil of Luigi Pareyson and a long-time professor at Turin, he developed in The End of Modernity, Belief, After Christianity, and Beyond Interpretation a distinctive hermeneutic philosophy in which the softening of strong metaphysical claims is read as the proper destiny of post-Christian modernity rather than as a mere loss. He served two terms as a member of the European Parliament and remained a public voice on questions of religion, truth, and political life until his death in 2023.

Gianteresio Vattimo was born at Turin in January 1936. He studied at the University of Turin under Luigi Pareyson and completed his postdoctoral training at Heidelberg under Hans-Georg Gadamer and Karl Löwith, who shaped his lifelong engagement with Nietzsche and Heidegger. He was professor of aesthetics at Turin from 1964 and of theoretical philosophy from 1982 until his retirement; from 1999 to 2004 he served as a member of the European Parliament for the Italian centre-left.

His major works are Il concetto di fare in Aristotele (1961), Essere, storia e linguaggio in Heidegger (1963), Il soggetto e la maschera (1974), the influential The End of Modernity (La fine della modernità, 1985), The Transparent Society (1989), Beyond Interpretation (1994), Belief (Credere di credere, 1996), After Christianity (2002), Nichilismo ed emancipazione (2003), and Hermeneutic Communism with Santiago Zabala (2011).

Vattimo described his hermeneutics as a 'pensiero debole' or weak thought: in the wake of Nietzsche's death of God and Heidegger's history of being, philosophy must give up the search for ultimate foundations and learn to live with the kenotic weakening of metaphysics, of which secularised Christianity is the privileged guide. He combined this stance with a long-running engagement on the Italian left and an openly post-secular Catholic faith. He died at Turin in September 2023.