Secularization as Kenosis

182 | postmodern condition and secularity
regard to the validity of interpretations. Interpretations have to accord with weakening,
as a realization of what Nietzsche called ‘the accomplishment of nihilism’. A postmodern
culture, in which the need for Truth in an objective sense is no longer felt, is for
Vattimo the accomplishment of this positive nihilism. 40 This nihilism is not a downright
refusal to be ontological. Rather it is the specific ontology that emerges when we,
as Nietzsche described it, ‘roll from the center toward X.’ The ontology proper to postmodernism
is no longer related to a central human subject, rather the experience is one
of a decentering of the human subject.
The crucial problem of this nihilism is that the philosophy of Heidegger was designed
to describe an authentic way of being human in a nihilistic culture and in that
sense Heidegger cannot be interpreted as a nihilist. Vattimo is aware of his unfamiliar
interpretation of Heidegger. 41 His focus is, however, much more on the later works of
Heidegger, in which no longer the ‘gap’ between beings and Being is central, but the
presence of Being in beings in history. 42 Nihilism in this sense is a positive experience
of the world, but it is no longer anthropocentric or humanistic. 43
Another way to articulate this nihilism is to speak of a reduction of being to value.
This is not to say, a reduction to the subject that ascribes value, but a reduction to
exchange value. 44 Vattimo finds this version of nihilism coherent with the idea of the
death of God in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Nietzsche did not give up the idea of value
as such, only the idea of the highest values. The resulting nihilist account of value is
the reduction of being to exchange value. Values are, so to speak, ordered horizontally
and can be endlessly reinterpreted (exchanged). This replaces the metaphysical, vertical
ordering of values. In a postmodern sense, there is no “terminal or interrupting instance
of the highest value (God) to block the process”. In a postmodern, Nietzschean sense,
values can be displayed “. . . in their true nature, namely as possessing the capacity for
convertibility and an indefinite transformability or processuality.” 45
With this understanding of nihilism in mind, as entailing (a) a positive nihilism
and (b) an account of value as exchange value, we can see the original position of Vattimo
in the philosophy of the second half of the twentieth century. In the course of
the post-war period, there have been various movements that have tried to counter the
advent of nihilism. In the wake of Heidegger, this has for example been expressed in a
discourse of authenticity, as in existentialism. Nihilism is understood as a loss of transcendent
meaning, which leaves us more and more subject to bureaucracy, technology
and an increasingly impersonal society. When Vattimo defines nihilism as ‘universal
40 “Today we begin to be, or are able to be, accomplished nihilists.”Vattimo, End of Modernity, 19.
41 He states : “Nevertheless, it would appear that Heidegger’s mode of thought is the opposite of nihilism,
at least in the sense in which nihilism signifies that process which not only eliminates Being as foundation
but forgets about being altogether. Nihilism, according to a passage from Heidegger’s Nietzsche, is
that process in which in the end ‘there is nothing left of Being’ as such.” Vattimo, End of Modernity, 118.
42 Van Reijen writes: “Diese Wahrheit des Seyns ist gar nichts vom Seyn Verschiedenes, sondern sein
eigenstes Wesen, und deshalb liegt es an der Geschichte des Seyns, ob es diese Wahrheit und sich selbst verschenkt
oder verweigert und so erst eigentlich in seine Geschichte das Abgründige bringt.” Willem van Reijen,
‘Heideggers ontologische Differenz. Der fremde Unterschied in uns und die Instandigkeit im Nichts’, Deutsche
Zeitschrift für Philosophie 52/4 (2004), 519–540.
43 Vattimo writes: “Nihilism concerns first of all Being itself, even if this point should not to be taken
to mean that nihilism is a matter of considerably more and different things than ‘simply’ humanity.” Vattimo,
End of Modernity, 20.
44 Vattimo, End of Modernity, 21.
45 Vattimo, End of Modernity, 21.