by Gianni Vattimo
what Nietzsche called "school of suspicion" is perhaps what more generally characterized the thought of this century, to such an extent that could be considered his main "discovery" or inheritance the next century. It is as if we had realized that, as Nietzsche writes in More beyond good and evil, behind every cave lies a cave and so on. Understood in this way, the school of suspicion does not identify with the mere criticism of the ideology of Marxist label, or the Freudian psychoanalysis, that illuminate the unconscious also means to seize him and disband his power to condition.
fit Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis, indeed, within the definition but without the radicalization that Nietzsche suggests, they would still only new theories of truth and reality. A very limited suspect, therefore, not be set aside, in this version, the suspicion that characterized Search-Platonic, but also the pre-Socratic-of "essences" of things. The suspicion of this century intellectuals recognizable in many positions in the last decades, also suspected of truth "true." Heidegger taught us to call this process the end of metaphysics. Indeed, if all you should ask why, the very notion of being radically transformed. There is nothing to which the thought can be still as compared to final data, a foundation, an undisputed authority. Since that failure to find a solid foundation is also unbearable, you can not avoid the question of the good reasons you have, if it does, the school of suspicion.
Should not we suspected in the suspect (too) general? It is the thesis of those (churches, ideologies reassuring, authorities several) lament the nihilistic tendency of twentieth-century culture. And yet, it is hard to oppose this trend indication nihilist who holds something to resist. Put another way: Is not the common experience of the absolute decline in our time? The believers will object that is not true that "God is dead" as Nietzsche claimed announce. Yet Christian theology could not attend the Holocaust and the many other horrors of the century without having to review their own ideas about God. Although it is difficult to bear because it seems to leave us no solid ground under their feet, nihilism has its "advantages." The dissolution of metaphysical absolutes also implies the end of the indisputable authorities. If not the triumph of reason, which never reaches final certainties, attended at least the triumph of the reasons, or exposure, from time to time, the reasons and arguments that suggest that a wider choice others.
Thus, the nihilism of the twentieth century also fall alejadísimas theories that seem to him, such as "communicative action" proposed by Habermas, that but rationality is not the "present" of a thesis, of a value to others in terms capable of being discussed "reasonably" and eventually accepted, and the many theories of argumentation that developed on the basis of reflection on logic and language. Ultimate foundations are no longer indisputable, but we must take into account the expectations, interests, the consensus of our fellows.
could say, perhaps, that being and reality no longer interested in the objectivity of things but rather the love and care for people. Of all the legacies left by the twentieth century, often dense and negative, perhaps nihilism just the most productive and full of future.
(c) Gianni Vattimo to Clarín, 1999. Translated by Cristina Sardoy
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