Weak Thought and Religion in Gianni Vattimo: Implications and Repercussions

In this paper, I focus on controversial issues in Gianni Vattimo’s later philosophy concerning religion. In his later writings, Vattimo employs his idea of “weak thought” (il pensiero debole) to (re)interpret Christianity by claiming that as opposed to metanarratives of modernity, a weak ontology not only weakens all foundations and dominant truth claims, but also enfeebles the strong metaphysical claims of atheism such as “God does not exist.” There is no reason to be an atheist, according to Vattimo, since weak thought enables emancipation from all ideological foundations, including atheism. Therefore, Vattimo offers a new definition of secularization: In contrast to modernity’s claim that secularization is to banish religion from the states of reason and progress, he changes the target of secularization from religion to metaphysics. Hence, the rigid distinction between faith and reason is nothing but another foundation that needs to be weakened. That is why the aim of secularization in the West is not separate faith and reason, but to weaken metaphysics in order to make room for faith. Put it differently, secularization is “weak thought” itself. This idea is strengthened by Vattimo’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s announcement of God’s death. However, in Vattiminian perspective, the God announced as dead by Nietzsche is not the God of the biblical text but the God of metaphysics which philosophers have believed since Pascal. Hence, the statement that “God is dead” is basically the rejection of the metaphysical foundation built by modernity this time. Like Jesus the crucified, God in the postmodern time, too, becomes weak and is tolerant toward the other. Furthermore, like the birth of Christianity, the postmodern return of religion, in fact, depends on those who receive this announcement. For postmodernity as a philosophy of event considers the Christian event in the sense of Ereignis. That means Nietzsche never comes to “claim” that God is dead, but rather he makes an announcement of the death of God as a historical event. That is why Vattimo maintains that postmodernity is not only the overcoming of metaphysics but also now the rebirth of Christianity after the second death of God, and proposes two constituents of the postmodern return of religion: (1) the reinterpretation of kénosis as a diminution of all foundations, and (2) the recognition of truth as caritas as opposed to the metaphysical agreement over truth as an obsession with objectivity. Thus, we can conclude that Vattimo in his later writings radicalizes hermeneutics in terms of scrutinizing the idea of “weak thought” with Christianity. However, it also should not be unnoticed that employing his earlier thoughts to (re)interpret Christianity after Nietzsche’s announcement and Heidegger’s ontology, Vattimo risks the major points of his earlier consideration of hermeneutics as koine in the postmodern era. Though he draws a modest picture of the postmodern era, Vattimo falls into the error of reducing hermeneutics as koine to the Christian discourse. On the other hand, Vattimo has an idiosyncratic and outmoded understanding of what it is to be an atheist “in postmodern times”. In this regard, by misapprehending the possible responses of atheistic arguments, Vattimo risks his weak thought (il pensiero debole) by making the religious approach “strong” in comparison not only with other religions and various traditions but also with atheism. Finally, I argue that Vattimo’s rhetoric of “the return” is doomed to constitute a fundamentalist approach regarding the future of Christianity.