Santiago Zabala

Response to Jeff Malpas and Nick Malpas

“When it comes to political deliberation, as Richard Rorty used to say, “philosophy is a good servant but a bad master.” But how can philosophy stop being a master or guide? Isn’t this inevitable when it comes to ethical or religious deliberations? One of the great lessons of the late American thinker was that if you took care of solidarity, contingency, and freedom, “truth will take care of itself.” In sum, truth should not come first, but rather second or even last among our philosophical concerns. But as the epigraph by George Orwell in Jeff and Nick Malpas’ contribution indicates (“In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act”) truth for them is vital. It should not simply come first; it must also be a core concept without which hermeneutics cannot operate. This is why from the start they ask whether “a politics animated by a hermeneutic sensibility [can] really do without truth as Vattimo and Zabala claim?” In the limited space we have we will recall why truth must be overcome and comment on two other issues they raise: the significance of dialogue and Wikileaks revelations.

Response to Perkins and Gillespie

“Weak thought, according to Perkins and Gillespie, indeed has a political vision that corresponds to it, and in Hermeneutic Communism Vattimo and Zabala flesh out that politics more comprehensively than they do in any of their other works,” as it is their “overtly political program.” While this may be the case, it is important to remember that politics and communism were first treated by Gianni in Nihilism and Emancipation (2003) and Ecce Comu (2007), which are vital phases within the development of weak thought. Although Hermeneutic Communism is a text which stands on its own feet, these other books must be taken into consideration when assessing weak thought’s politics.

Response to Egginton

We have been collaborating for many years with William Egginton, and it is not simply because he is a brilliant philosopher and literary theorist, but also because he is an admirer and disciple of the late American thinker Richard Rorty. Rorty was not only a close friend of ours, but also of “weak thought,” which he endorsed on several occasions. This week Rorty has returned to the pages of The New York Times, The Guardian, and other papers around the world, because in one of his last books, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America (1998), he predicted in the near future the election of a “strongman”, “someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots.”

Response to Mazzini

We agree with Silvia Mazzini when she points out that there are four central concepts (“specter” and “Hermes”) and figures (“Hamlet” and Nietzsche’s “Ubermensch”) in Hermeneutic Communism whose common weakness imply a call for action. This common weakness is not simply interesting from a theoretical point of view, as all four strive against impositions from above, but also given their call to “act” against a common enemy. This is probably why her contribution focuses on the problem of communication among the weak, that is, how a “hermeneutic-communist-specter” interferes “with the human historical process.” This is a problem for everyone dealing with the return of communism in the twenty-first century, whether they interpret it as an idea (Alain Badiou), a horizon (Jodi Dean), or a problem (Slavoj Žižek), has to confront. Jacques Derrida, who was the first to call for a return of communism after the fall of the Soviet Union, also faced this problem when he called for a “New International.”

Response to Liangjian

The title Liu Liangjian contribution, “It’s Time to Change the World, So Interpret It!” sounds very much like an order, instruction or command. Even though we always try to avoid these sorts of statements, there is a great temptation to use it now. This change of heart likely has a lot to do also with Eduardo Mendieta’s contribution in this volume, in which he claims that Hermeneutic Communism reads like a manifesto. Perhaps, in the tradition of the manifesto, we should also have called everyone to interpret the world as clearly as Liangjian does. His contribution is not only remarkable in that it points to the similarities between “weak thought” and an ancient Chinese sage of Daoism (Laozi), but also insofar as it questions “whether interpreting is enough to bring alternatives, emergencies, or events to the world.” In order to respond to this fundamental question, Liangjian reinterprets communism from a Chinese perspective in relation to our preference for the South American alternative.

Response to Glyn-Williams

The essence of Glyn-Williams’ insightful contribution is embodied in the beautiful epigraph (“Phases of a revolution are not decided in parliaments, they are only registered there”) by C.L.R. James. In the spirit of this great historian and political activist, Glyn-Williams suggests that we have given too much significance to the role that Chavez, Morales and other leaders played in Latin American politics, leaving aside those grassroots movements which created them. The “absence of grassroots, constituent power from their consideration of a region in which such powers have reached an extraordinary level of intensity” has inevitably presented the “Latin American people as passive beneficiaries of benevolent rulers.”

Response to Grimshaw

The central argument of Mike Grimshaw’s contribution is that we made “too great a step” and are “too far along” in history. We can’t but interpret this as a compliment. One of the last things we wanted Hermeneutic Communism to be is simply another description of the world. Even though innovative concepts such as “politics of description” or “framed democracy” sought to better understand the present, they also involved a call to change the status quo. This change, however, does not imply an “alternative” to the “politics of descriptions” and “framed democracies,” but rather an “alteration”, as metaphysics cannot be overcome (uberwunden) once and for all. We still consider this to be one of the most significant contributions of our book, because it invites other political theories to prevent falling back into metaphysics. Although the New Zealander sociologist does not explicitly reproach us for falling back into metaphysics, he claims that we overlook the transition to “hermeneutic communism,” which he refers to as “hermeneutic capitalism.” But why is this transition important and what does it consist in?

Response to Valgenti

Robert Valgenti introduced the great Italian philosopher Luigi Pareyson to the English speaking world. Pareyson, together with Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, is among the most original hermeneutic thinkers of the twentieth century. But Valgenti has not simply translated one of his most important works, Truth and Interpretation (1971), but also a number of books by Gianni, such as Farewell to Truth (2011) and Of Reality (2016), as well as many of his essays. Valgenti’s expertise is not limited to Italian philosophy. His knowledge of German hermeneutics is also profound, as is evident in the “genealogy of interpretation” he delineates through Nietzsche’s writings in his contribution. This genealogy serves our American friend not only to point out the centrality Nietzsche plays together with Marx and Heidegger in our project, but also to disclose a “contradiction” at the core of Hermeneutic Communism. What does this contradiction consist in and why is it important?

Response to Marder

Michael Marder is a continental philosopher specializing in phenomenology. He is the author of several books on Derrida, Schmitt, and together with Jeffrey T. Nealon, works at the frontline of so called “plant studies.” A few years ago we wrote a foreword for his first book on plants as it entered within the field of research of weak thought. “Weak thought” has now marked its 35th anniversary since the publication of Gianni and Pier Aldo Rovatti’s edited collection Weak Thought (with contributions from Umberto Eco, Gianni Carchia, among others), and it has been almost 40 years since Gianni first used the concept in his essay “Towards an Ontology of Decline.” During all these decades, weak thought has not only confronted other philosophical stances, such as as neo-pragmatism and deconstruction, but also help the weak emerge as in the case of plants studies.

Response to Kaye

Kaye, together with Pepe Escobar, was among the first to write a review of Hermeneutic Communism. Similarly to the Brazilian investigative journalist, Kaye, from the beginning of his review (and contribution in this volume), points out how our book “contains several year’s worth of what one might call observations directed towards contemporary political events.” These “observations” are a significant part of our project which reviewers have either rejected as too journalistic or praise for its attempt to break away from the professionalism of traditional academic texts. In a way, we’re following Richard Rorty when he suggested that “philosophy books should be in the future, less pretentious, less professionalized, less priggish, less guarded, funnier, more poetic and perhaps more sexier than those of the past.”