Art’s Claim to Truth

Gianni Vattimo; Edited by Santiago Zabala and Translated by Luca D’Isanto

May, 2008
Cloth, 216 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-13850-5
$29.50 / £17.50

"Whether he is reflecting on the relation between truth and aesthetic experience, unpacking the tensions between critical interpretations and the original potential of the work of art, or exploring the implications of the thesis that the viewer is part of the work, Gianni Vattimo keeps his eye on the target: a concept of the work as the origin of the possible, the first exemplar of a law that itself brings into being without exhausting it. Anyone interested in the philosophy of art will learn much from these erudite essays." — Steven Crowell, Rice University, and author of Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning

"This long-overdue translation not only contributes to our appreciation of the significance of Gianni Vattimo's philosophy but is also an important event in the history of so-called continental aesthetics. Santiago Zabala's masterful introduction enhances the reader's understanding both of the context of Vattimo's early writing on art and of its continuing significance today." — Robert Bernasconi, University of Memphis, and author of How to Read Sartre

Related Subjects

• Aesthetics
• Continental/Feminist Philosophy

Series

• Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts

About the Author

Gianni Vattimo teaches hermeneutic philosophy at the University of Turin and is a renowned public intellectual and former member of the European parliament. His books with Columbia University Press are After the Death of God, Dialogue with Nietzsche, The Future of Religion (with Richard Rorty), Nihilism and Emancipation, and After Christianity. Santiago Zabala is an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Potsdam University Institute of Philosophy. He is the author of The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy: A Study of Ernst Tugendhat and The Remains of Being (forthcoming), and editor of Weakening Philosophy and of Vattimo's Nihilism and Emancipation and The Future of Religion. Luca D'Isanto is a translator, editor, and writer of numerous publications on the religious and political turn in postmodern thought.

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