Overview

First collected in Italy in 1985, Art's Claim to Truth is considered by many philosophers to be one of Gianni Vattimo's most important works. Newly revised for English readers, the book begins with a challenge to Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel, who viewed art as a metaphysical aspect of reality rather than a futuristic anticipation of it. Following Martin Heidegger's interpretation of the history of philosophy, Vattimo outlines the existential ontological conditions of aesthetics, paying particular attention to the works of Kandinsky, which reaffirm the ontological implications of art. Vattimo then builds on Hans-Georg Gadamer's theory of aesthetics and provides an alternative to a rationalistic-positivistic criticism of art. This is the heart of Vattimo's argument, and with it he demonstrates how hermeneutical philosophy reaffirms art's ontological status and makes clear the importance of hermeneutics for aesthetic studies. In the book's final section, Vattimo articulates the consequences of reclaiming the ontological status of aesthetics without its metaphysical implications, holding Aristotle's concept of beauty responsible for the dissolution of metaphysics itself. In its direct engagement with the works of Gadamer, Heidegger, and Luigi Pareyson, Art's Claim to Truth offers a better understanding of the work of Vattimo and a deeper knowledge of ontology, hermeneutics, and the philosophical examination of truth.

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9780231138505

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Art's Claim to Truth offers much to work with with in the field of contemporary aesthetics. -- Daniel Guentchev, Kinesis

Whether he is reflecting on the relation between truth and aesthetic experience, unpacking the tensions between critical interpretations and the original potential of the work of art, or exploring the implications of the thesis that the viewer is part of the work, Vattimo keeps his eye on the target: a concept of the work as the origin of the possible, the first exemplar of a law that itself brings into being without exhausting it. -- Steven Crowell

Author Information

Gianni Vattimo teaches hermeneutic philosophy at the University of Turin and is a renowned public intellectual and former member of the European parliament. His books with Columbia University Press are After the Death of God, Dialogue with Nietzsche, The Future of Religion (with Richard Rorty), Nihilism and Emancipation, and After Christianity. Santiago Zabala is an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Potsdam University Institute of Philosophy. He is the author of The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy: A Study of Ernst Tugendhat and The Remains of Being (forthcoming), and editor of Weakening Philosophy and of Vattimo's Nihilism and Emancipation and The Future of Religion. Luca D'Isanto is a translator, editor, and writer of numerous publications on the religious and political turn in postmodern thought.

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