Truth and Interpretation by Pareyson Luigi Vattimo Gianni. Benso Silvia. Valgenti Robert T

Author:Pareyson, Luigi,Vattimo, Gianni.,Benso, Silvia.,Valgenti, Robert T.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2013-01-10T16:00:00+00:00

7. The Falsification of Time in Ideological Thought

If things are so, one could nevertheless think that ideological thought, as expressive and historical, contains the genuine truth of its time, and that an appropriate treatment of demystification that sheds light on the true meaning implied in explicit discourse is all one needs to find such a truth. Yet, despite every appearance to the contrary, merely expressive and historical thought does not say the truth about its time because it lacks an interpretative character, and interpretation occurs only within ontological thought, in the originary bond between person and truth. Genuine historical rootedness and authentic ontological relation are indivisible in the originary nexus of person and truth: Thus the idea emptied of truth, namely the one marked by the forgetting of Being, also loses its true contact with history, becoming not only the principle of the masking of reality, but also the reason behind the falsification of time. There can be neither true contact with history without contact with truth, nor interpretation of time without revelatory thought. When ontological rootedness is missing, historical rootedness is also altered, and the expression of time assumes a falsifying character. Thought devoid of truth does not speak the truth, not even about time. And saying that, no matter how devoid of truth, such a thought is nevertheless full of time is to no avail; it is surely full of time, but time that has been falsified.

Ideological thought, in so far as it elaborates and exercises a conceptual apparatus founded upon an empty rationality and a purely formal discourse, is the counterfeiting of truth, and precisely as the counterfeiting of truth it is also the falsification of time. Even if it coincides with the historical situation, it does not contain the truth about time because in it the explicit discourse masks and thus falsifies what is expressed there, and that happens precisely because it is nothing other than the expression of time. Nor should one think that searching for the true meaning of the explicit in the implied amounts to finding the truth: Ideology is so radically deceptive that its demystification is a denunciation rather than a rendering it true [inveramento]. In no way can the distinction between apparent and real, explicit and implied, declared and secret, evident and hidden be traced back to the distinction between true and false. Certainly, there is no other understanding of ideology than demystification, as it reduces it to time, of which it is simultaneously product, expression, and masking. What is thus discovered is not truth, but weak and tired surrogates for truth: that is, the “truth” of mere historicity as the correspondence between an idea and a situation; the “truth” of false consciousness as the masking that denounces deep motivation; the pragmatic and technical “truth” as efficiency of action and experimental performativity. Ideology cannot, therefore, reach an authentic knowledge or furnish a genuine understanding of time because there can be no interpretation of time if not within the limits of the

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