A Farewell to Truth by Vattimo Gianni; McCuaig William ; Valgenti Robert T

Author:Vattimo, Gianni; McCuaig, William ; Valgenti, Robert T.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PHI027000, Philosophy/Movements/Deconstruction, PHI019000, Philosophy/Political
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2011-03-04T05:00:00+00:00

FOR A NONRELIGIOUS CHRISTIANITY

Let us begin with a few remarks that may help us to understand what interpretation signifies and what its role is in the ensemble of what we call knowledge. In the act of knowing, I always select a perspective. What about scientists? They have chosen to set aside their private interests, but they describe only that which their scientific field encompasses, so they never know everything. On the other hand, a map that coincides exactly with the terrain it maps is entirely pointless.

Heidegger’s objection to metaphysics also begins here, with the observation that even in deciding to be objective, we always assume a definite, defined position, a vantage point or viewpoint that delimits but that is also indispensable for our encounter with the world. Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics as a claim to define the truth as an objective datum starts from that observation and then goes on to focus on the ethicopolitical aspects of metaphysics: the “rationalized” society of the early twentieth century against which the historical avant-gardes of the time struggled. Heidegger realized that even the pretended objectivity of the sciences is inspired by a determinate interest, such as to describe the movement of gases in such a way that others will be able to discuss it too and advance knowledge of the behavior of gases; Lukács says the same from a Marxist perspective. Scientists are not driven by an impulse of truth, and it is not possible to imagine the relation between the world and knowledge as the world and the mirror of the world. Rather, we imagine it as the world and someone who stands in the world and takes his bearings in it utilizing his cognoscitive capacities, in other words choosing, reorganizing, substituting, and so on.

The whole concept of interpretation lies right there. There is no experience of truth that is not interpretive; I know nothing unless it interests me, but if it interests me, evidently I don’t gaze upon it in a disinterested fashion. In Heidegger, this concept enters into his thinking about the historical sciences, as one sees in the early sections of Being and Time and in many other texts from the same period. Hence I am an interpreter inasmuch as I do not gaze upon the world from outside; I gaze on the world outside me precisely because I am inside it. If I am inside it, however, my interest is far from straightforward. I cannot state exactly how matters stand, only how they look from where I stand, how they appear to me, and how I believe them to be. If I have an idea that leads to a successful experiment, that doesn’t mean that I gained exhaustive, objective knowledge of that aspect of reality. What I did—and the philosophy of science backs this up—was to make the experiment work, on the basis of certain expectations and premises. When I do an experiment, I already dispose of a set of criteria and instruments that make it possible for me, and for anyone whose ideas differ from mine, to tell whether the experiment worked or not.

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