Secularization as Kenosis

206 | postmodern condition and secularity
man produce a gigantic amount of knowledge about a reality that is itself a human design.
The irony is that with the emergence of the communication society, this ideal of
transparency is at the same time disavowed. Through the constant expansion of interlocutors
as producers of information, the idea of an accurate description of reality
becomes implausible.
The aesthetic experience of the world as a gateway to truth cannot be understood
as a more original relation to the world than the representational idea of knowledge.
Rather, experience is understood as a more radical understanding of representational
knowing; as knowing now takes place in the “mirror play of the world.” 152 The Heideggerian
philosophy as a philosophy of the experience of ‘in der Welt sein’, is interpreted
by Vattimo as a philosophy that experiences Being in contingent acts of creativity. For
Heidegger a work of art has the capacity to bring forth reality. Vattimo underscores
that in this respect Heidegger speaks in the plural, of worlds, rather than of the world.
The meaning of an aesthetic experience is in its capacity to bring forth worlds which
are “not just imaginary, but constitute being itself, that is, are events of being”. 153
To what extent is the dissolution of the world a fruitful perspective for a philosophy
of culture? Would a liberation from the limits of this world really inaugurate a more free
and plural society? Is not the most dominant development in our ‘aestheticized culture’
the unification of lifestyles as promoted by commercial manipulation? And in what
sense can a postmodern culture which centers around information technology be said
to be a more just society? Vattimo’s response to these questions is that understanding
the world in terms of weak thinking would not simply be a world that suits our desires
better, rather the process of the dissolution of the world should be a conflictual process.
The reason why the emancipatory effect of world dissolution holds off is that we are
still too much in the grip of the laws of the real world. The tendency to follow the
consensus of the majority is a symptom of the realism of the laws of the market that
is still at work in postmodern society, and that frustrates the emancipatory potential
of an aesthetic culture. 154 The limited success of the aesthetization of the world should
not lead us to return to the world (‘Hinnehmen der Welt’ 155 ), rather, within the context
of a highly technological culture, we should fully benefit from the possibilities of an
aestheticized culture. Only when we give priority to aesthetics over the alleged realism
of economics can there be a truly free and plural society. 156
Philosophically, the dissolution of reality is defended by Vattimo as nihilism. The
most explicit text on the possibility of a world loss that at the same time can do justice
to an experience of the world is in the text Hermeneutics and Nihilism. Vattimo is in
152 Vattimo, Transparent Society, 55. See also Vattimo, End of Modernity, 117.
153 Vattimo, Transparent Society, 71. “In essence, the ‘continuous references to other, possible lifeworlds
are not merely imaginary, marginal, or complementary, but in their reciprocal game they comprise and constitute
the so-called real world.” Vattimo, Transparent Society, 90–1.
154 “Das es jedoch nicht geschieht, liegt daran, das noch eine gewisse Repression wirksam ist, ein
verbleibender Einfluss des Wirklichkeitsprinzips, das, in der weiten Bedeutung, die wir ihm geben, mit dem
Gesetz des Marktes identifiziert werden kann.” Gianni Vattimo, ‘Die Grenzen der Wirklichkeitsauflösung’,
in: Gianni Vattimo and Wolfgang Welsch, editors, Medien - Welten Wirklichkeiten (München: Wilhelm Fink
Verlag, 1997), 23.
155 Vattimo, ‘Grenzen’, 24.
156 “Die Menschheit muss sich heute auf die Hohe ihrer technischen Möglichkeiten begeben und das
Ideal eines Menschen schaffen, der sich dieser Möglichkieten bewusst ist und sie bis zum letzten ausschöpft.
Und diese bestehen für uns, wie fur Marcuse und selbst für Nietzsche in einer radikalen Aesthetisierung der
Existenz.” Vattimo, ‘Grenzen’, 25.