Gianni Vattimo
Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo (b. 1936) has established himself as a prominent
theorist of aesthetics and the leading phenomenological thinker in Italy. Vattimo, himself
a former pupil of Hans-Georg Gadamer, has translated Gadamer’s Truth and Method into
Italian. He has also written extensively on Heidegger and Nietzsche. By focusing on the
critique that these authors have made on modern thinking, Vattimo has explored the
question of how these debates may then inform our understanding of postmodern
thinking. He has thereby emerged also as a significant theorist of postmodernity.
Central to Vattimo’s own contribution to the debate about postmodernity has been his
introduction of the controversial notion of ‘weak thought’ (il pensiero debole). Here
Vattimo argues that traditional metaphysics has privileged ‘strong thought’ in the form of
‘reason’. In following nihilistic thinkers such as Nietzsche and Heidegger, Vattimo
champions instead the ontological as a form of ‘weak thought’. Thus Being itself
becomes an ‘unnoticed and marginal event’. This has important ramifications for works
of art in general, and architecture in particular. In the essay ‘Ornament/Monument’
Vattimo observes how ornament and decor have been viewed traditionally as peripheral,
and as expendable appendages to the work of art proper. Vattimo challenges this
marginalization. There are clear parallels here with Derrida’s thinking in Truth in
Painting. Ornament for Vattimo, no less than the seemingly peripheral ‘frame’
(parergon) for Derrida, is precisely part of the work of art. Vattimo argues that the work
of art is an example of ‘weak ontology’ and should itself be perceived in terms of
ornament. Thus the ornamental is an intrinsic part of the work of art.
In his essay ‘The End of Modernity, the End of the Project?’ Vattimo challenges the
‘strong’ legitimation of humanist aesthetics with its emphasis on universals. The
complexity of contemporary life should now be recognized as a multiplicity of ‘language
games’ which should be reflected in its architecture. Likewise there is a need to attend to
the relative shortage of the symbolic and the ornamental in contemporary architecture.
Architects should see themselves as ‘functionaries of society’ and should respond more
directly to the cultural conditions of place and community.
Vattimo’s essay ‘Ornament/Monument’ provides a gloss to Gadamer’s extract, ‘The
Ontological Foundation of the Occasional and the Decorative’ contained in this volume.
It also offers a provocative contrast to Bataille’s and Lefebvre’s discussions of the
monument. Meanwhile Vattimo’s essay ‘The End of Modernity, the End of the Project?’
evokes comparison with the extract from The Seeds of Time by Fredric Jameson, also
contained within this volume.
THE END OF MODERNITY, THE END OF THE PROJECT?
The important thing to notice in the title of this essay is the question mark; one cannot
insist on the equivalence of the ‘end of modernity’ and the ‘end of the project’. I propose,