Secularization as Kenosis

secularization as kenosis | 183
equivalence’, it is obvious that he sees the loss of transcendent meaning as a liberation.
As he sees it, every attempt to isolate an experience that escapes this equivalence or
exchange value is suspect as ‘an effort to isolate and defend an ideal zone of use-value,
namely a place where the dissolution of Being into value does not occur. 46 (As examples
he mentions Wittgenstein’s mystic remarks on ‘what cannot be said’ and the discourse
of authenticity.) For Vattimo such attempts do not prove nihilism wrong, rather they
are as it were rearguard skirmishes that indicate the accomplishment of nihilism. The
moral of this is that the longing for a sphere of use value instead of exchange value,
of theological or theoretical truth, is always violent. In nihilism, Vattimo asserts, the
‘. . . conditions of existence are by now less violent and, at the same time, less prone to
pathos.’ 47 So for Vattimo the loss of transcendent meaning in nihilism and the emerging
mass culture of the twentieth century is not to be resisted. Against critics of culture that
call for a more authentic existence, Vattimo holds that mass culture and communication
society are not solely ‘. . . the apocalyptic moments of a Menschheitsdämmerung or dehumanization,
but instead gesture toward a possible new human experience.’ 48 In a culture
of ‘universal equivalence’ and generalized communication, Vattimo sees a realization of
what he calls the ‘weakening of the cogent force of reality’ and a manifestation of being
as narration. This leads to a society that understands itself as a ‘permanent transcription,
in terms of the imaginary, of the new possibilities of the symbolic that have been
opened up by technology, by secularization and by the ‘weakening’ of reality that are
typical of late-modern society.’ 49
We cannot go into details with regard to the legitimacy of Vattimo’s interpretation
of Nietzsche and Heidegger. What does matter to our concern is that Vattimo regards
nihilism as an antidote to the violence implicit in metaphysics and the idea of objective
truth. The emphasis on nihilism does not only distinguish Vattimo from metaphysical
philosophy, it also distances him from a dominant school in contemporary
postmodernism, which interprets Heidegger’s idea of ‘ontological difference’ in theological
terms. According to Vattimo this ignores the weakening of being and returns
to a dualistic scheme of transcendence and immanence. To Vattimo’s mind the nihilistic
interpretation of Heidegger offers a more promising perspective for a postmodern
culture and a more authentic interpretation of Christianity.
Difference
The second component of Vattimo’s postmodernism is difference. The notion of difference
is used in opposition to the idea of presence in modernity, according to which
truth is located in the pure presence of things to the mind. As to the secular nature
of postmodernism, quite a lot depends on how one interprets the concept of difference.
In French postmodernism, there is a general tendency to interpret the philosophy of
Heidegger as enabling a ‘more divine God.’ 50 Heidegger’s problem of Seinsvergessenheit
is taken by them as a plea for a more pious understanding of Being, which is no longer
46 Vattimo, End of Modernity, 23.
47 Vattimo, End of Modernity, 24.
48 Vattimo, End of Modernity, 26.
49 Vattimo, End of Modernity, 28.
50 The Dutch original reads ‘goddelijker God.’ P.H.A.I. Jonkers, ‘God in France. Heidegger’s Legacy’,
in: P.H.A.I. Jonkers and Ruud Welten, editors, God In France: Eight Contemporary French Thinkers On God
(Leuven, 2005), 3.