One NIHILISTIC HERMENEUTICS AND CHRISTIANITY IN GIANNI VATTIMO

Abstract

The objective of this text is to analytically present the relationship between nihilistic hermeneutic philosophy and Christianity, from which the Vattimian formulation of “nonreligious Christianity” emerged. This objective is justified by three fundamental reasons. The first is that Gianni Vattimo elaborated a philosophical program, concentrated in his pensiero debole, which denoted the crisis of metaphysics and the construction of a nihilistic hermeneutical philosophy, through which he built the conception of “non-religious Christianity” and an effectively practical political philosophy. The second is that Vattimo is
an author, who has become a significant subject of study for researchers in Religious Sciences and Philosophy, both internationally and nationally. The third refers to the author’s own personal identity, markedly Catholic Christian, since childhood, which has been combined, in its own way, to the nihilistic strand of hermeneutic philosophy as a basis to being reflecting on the human being and the world. To achieve this objective, the fundamental characteristics
of Vattimo’s philosophy, the relevance of his nihilistic hermeneutic philosophy in relation to Christianity and the way religion is situated in post-modernity will be presented.