Secularization as Kenosis

180 | postmodern condition and secularity
ture. 29
From this understanding of secularization as a dissolution, it follows that we should
not think of the end of history as simply a stop, but as the breakdown of its unity.
When we realize that the the unilinear and supposedly rational account of progress was
but one story among many others, the unilinear account of history is but one possible
perspective. When we take this narrative approach, history is a much more confusing
conglomerate of narratives that show no logical or chronological unity. Moreover, even
if one would want to bring all the possible stories together in one single narrative,
this becomes increasingly difficult in our postmodern condition. Modern media and
information technology enlarge the amount of data, stories and histories to an extent
that unity becomes more and more implausible.
At this point it is fruitful to give one more comparison with Rorty’s philosophy,
who is also an interpreter of Heidegger. Rorty sees the end of metaphysics as opening
an even more radical historicism. Vattimo quotes Rorty as saying that “Heidegger’s
serious limit was to call the ‘History of Being’ an event which unfolds in no more than
a hundred books or so of the Western tradition that constitutes the philosophical canon
in which Heidegger grew up, and whose limits and contingency Heidegger should have
acknowledged.” 30 Reducing philosophy to nothing but a contingent series of writings is
unacceptable for Vattimo. 31 The nihilism Vattimo is defining tries to do justice to both
the postmodern criticism of any realist metaphysics, at the same time trying to avoid
a textualist nihilism as formulated by Rorty, according to which there is no history or
reality apart from the texts. 32
Vattimo sees metaphysical philosophy as mistaken; nevertheless the way we are
going from there is never completely loose from that tradition. New experiences make
sense only as dialogues with that tradition. 33 Vattimo does not see the postmodern
scattering of metaphysics as a reason to give up on the idea of Being. Rather it is an
indication of the idea that Being is dynamic and makes history. Postmodern philosophy
29 Vattimo, End of Modernity, 8.
30 Vattimo, Belief, 40.
31 Vattimo, Belief, 40.
32 Elsewhere he asserts that even if there were not a history of being, we would still be obliged to profess
our continuity with the tradition that shaped us. This can never be a matter of irony. Also: “If someone (I
am thinking of Rorty) were to say to me that there is no need to speak of the history of Being to explain
my preference for a world where solidarity and respect for others prevail, rather than war of all against all, I
would object that even from the perspective of solidarity and respect it is important to become aware of the
roots of our preferences. Indeed, an ethics of respect and solidarity can become reasonable, precise in what
it says and capable of holding its own in conversation with others precisely by relating itself explicitly to its
provenance.” Vattimo, Belief, 45.
33 Gianni Vattimo, Jenseits vom Subjekt: Nietzsche, Heidegger und die Hermeneutik (Böhlau: Passagen
Verlag, 1986), 19. “Vattimo . . . sees the heterogeneity and diversity in our experience of the world as a
hermeneutical problem to be solved by developing a sense of continuity between the present and the past.
This continuity is to be a unity of meaning rather than the repetition of a functional structure, and the
meaning is ontological. In this respect, Vattimo’s project is an extension of Heidegger’s inquiries into the
meaning of being. However, where Heidegger situates Nietzsche within the limits of metaphysics, Vattimo
joins Heidegger’s ontological hermeneutics with Nietzsche’s effort to think beyond nihilism and historicism
with his concept of eternal return. The result, says Vattimo, is a certain distortion of Heidegger’s
reading of Nietzsche, allowing Heidegger and Nietzsche to be interpreted through one another.” Gary
Aylesworth, ‘Postmodernism’, in: Edward N.Zalta, editor, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2005),
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