Not Being God: A Collaborative Autobiography

Gianni Vattimo; With Piergiorgio Paterlini and Translated by William McCuaig

June, 2009
Cloth, 200 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-14720-0
$27.50 / £19.00

"This book offers an authentic and moving picture of the great Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo. It is unique in that it was not directly written by its subject but by a seasoned Italian writer who knows how to express Vattimo's thoughts and emotions in strikingly understandable language. Speaking from the heart of Vattimo, this book is often very funny and reads like a novel, yet it is also an extraordinary introduction to the important work of a master thinker of postmodernism. Quite a feat!" — Jean Grondin, Université de Montréal, and author of Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics

"Dual authorship allows this book to speak in a way that mirrors the play among perspectives that is so central to Gianni Vattimo's thinking. As a result, this book is more candid and direct than one often finds in intellectual autobiographies. It is essential to understanding Vattimo's personality, which defies the traditional stereotype of the distant or arrogant European professor, and captures quite accurately Vattimo's candor, modesty, sense of humor, and, above all, his love of life and education." — Robert T. Valgenti, Lebanon Valley College

Related Subjects

• Continental/Feminist Philosophy

About the Author

Gianni Vattimo is professor of philosophy at the University of Turin. His books with Columbia University Press are Art's Claim to Truth, After the Death of God, Dialogue with Nietzsche, The Future of Religion, Nihilism and Emancipation, and After Christianity. His forthcoming book, coauthored with Santiago Zabala, is Hermeneutic Communism. Piergiorgio Paterlini is a writer and journalist living in Italy and cofounder of the satirical journal Cuore. William McCuaig is also the translator of Gianni Vattimo's Dialogue with Nietzsche and Nihilism and Emancipation.

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