Abstract
In his book, The Reckless Minds: Intellectuals in Politics, Mark Lilla rehearses the familiar condemnation of Martin Heidegger for his association with the Nazi Party. For Lilla, Heidegger is just one of many contemporary intellectuals who has no business commenting on, or involving oneself in, politics: Better to avoid the political sphere altogether than run the risk of the philosophical love of wisdom degenerating into what Lilla terms a philotyranny. In contrast to Lilla, Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala accomplish the nearly unthinkable task, not only taking on the mantle of Heidegger for their entirely original and sorely needed articulation of the meaning of the politics of hermeneutics, but convincingly demonstrate that a truly Heideggerian politics would be communistic, not fascist. In so doing, Vattimo and Zabala not only reinvigorate the politics of the left, but even more, they redefine and redirect philosophical hermeneutics. As such, it can be argued that Hermeneutic Communism is the first salvo in the political becoming of hermeneutics.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Lilla, p. 216.
- 2.
Mignolo, p. 55.
- 3.
Ibid., p. 57.
- 4.
Quoted in Wolin, p. 4.
- 5.
Wolin, p. 2.
- 6.
Caputo, Demythologizing Heidegger, p. 3.
- 7.
Malabou, pp. 2–3.
- 8.
Ibid. Italics hers.
- 9.
Malabou, p.286.
- 10.
Vattimo and Zabala, pp. 2–3.
- 11.
Vattimo and Zabala, p. 1.
- 12.
Vattimo and Zabala, p. 4.
- 13.
Vattimo and Zabala, p.4.
- 14.
Ibid., p. 5.
- 15.
See Jeffrey W. Robbins, Radical Democracy and Political Theology (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).
- 16.
See Vattimo and Zabala, pp. 76–77.
- 17.
Mignolo, p. xvi.
- 18.
Ibid., p. xvi.
- 19.
Ibid., p. xviii.
- 20.
Vattimo and Zabala, p. 122.
- 21.
Ibid., p. 129.
- 22.
Ibid., pp. 110, 111.
- 23.
Ibid., p. 111.
- 24.
Mignolo, p. xxxi.
- 25.
It is worth noting here how Zabala himself has acknowledged that the term “communism” is not native to the South American political movements and figures that he and Vattimo have together cited. For instance, in an interview with Silvia Mazzini he has admitted that it is true that Chavez does not call himself a communist, but instead, uses the term “socialism for the twenty-first century.” See “Chavez is Still a Model for Obama: Interview with Santiago Zabala,” Al Jazeera (November 11, 2012): http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/11/2012118121638309403.html.
- 26.
For instance, see Ola Sigurdson, Theology and Marxism in Eagleton and Žižek: A Conspiracy of Hope (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
- 27.
Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism (London: Blackwell, 1996), p. 9.
- 28.
Ibid., p. 14.
- 29.
Ibid., pp. 21–23.
- 30.
Ibid., p. 132.
- 31.
Kenneth Surin, “Rewriting the Ontological Script of Liberation: On the Question of Finding a New Kind of Political Subject,” in Theology and the Political: The New Debate, edited by Creston Davis, John Milbank, and Slavoj Žižek (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 240–266.
- 32.
Ibid., pp. 252–253.
- 33.
See Kenneth Surin, “Rewriting the Ontological Script of Liberation: On the Question of Finding a New Kind of Political Subject,” pp. 254–257.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Robbins, J.W. (2017). The Political Becoming of Hermeneutics. In: Mazzini, S., Glyn-Williams, O. (eds) Making Communism Hermeneutical. Contributions to Hermeneutics, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59021-9_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59021-9_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-59019-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-59021-9
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)