Heralding the beginning of the philosophical dialogue on the concept for which Gianni Vattimo would become best known (and coining its name), this groundbreaking 1983 collection includes foundational essays by Vattimo and Pier Aldo Rovatti, along with original contributions by nine other Italian philosophers influenced by and working within the authors’ framework. Dissatisfied with the responses to nineteenth- and twentieth-century European philosophy offered by Marxism, deconstruction, and poststructuralism, Vattimo found in the nihilism of Friedrich Nietzsche an important context within which to take up the hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. The idea of weak thought sketched by Vattimo and Rovatti emphasizes a way of understanding the role of philosophy based on language, interpretation, and limits rather than on metaphysical and epistemological certainties—without falling into relativism. To the first English-language edition of this volume, translator Peter Carravetta adds an extensive critical introduction, providing an overview of weak thought and taking stock of its philosophical trajectory over more than a quarter century.

The essays within Beyond Catholicism trace the interconnections of belief, heresy, and mysticism in Italian culture from the Middle Ages to today. In particular, they explore how religious discourse has unfolded within Italian culture in the context of shifting paradigms of rationality, authority, time, good and evil, and human collectivities.

Over the course of his career, Gianni Vattimo has assumed a number of public and private identities and has pursued multiple intellectual paths. He seems to embody several contradictions, at once defending and questioning religion, critiquing and serving the state, yet the diversity of his life and thought form the very essence of, as he sees it, the vocation and responsibility of the philosopher. In a world that desires quantifiable results and ideological expediency, the philosopher becomes the vital interpreter of the endlessly complex. As he outlines his ideas about the philosopher's role, Vattimo builds an important companion to his life's work. He confronts questions concerning science, religion, logic, literature, and truth, and passionately defends the power of hermeneutics to engage with life's difficulties. He conjures a clear vision of philosophy as something separate from the sciences and the humanities but also intimately connected to their processes, and he reiterates a conception of truth that emphasizes fidelity and participation through dialogue.

This book chronicles the demise of the supposedly leftist Italian cultural establishment during the long 1980s. During that time, the nation's literary and intellectual vanguard managed to lose the prominence handed it after the end of World War II and the defeat of Fascism. What emerged instead was a uniquely Italian brand of cultural capital that deliberately avoided any critical questioning of the prevailing order. Ricciardi criticizes the development of this new hegemonic arrangement in film, literature, philosophy, and art criticism. She focuses on several turning points: Fellini's futile, late-career critique of Berlusconi-style commercial television, Calvino's late turn to reactionary belletrism, Vattimo's nihilist and conservative responses to French poststructuralism, and Bonito Oliva's movement of art commodification, Transavanguardia.

Thinking Community Music explores critical questions concerning community music practice and theory with emphasis on intervention, hospitality, pedagogy, social justice, inclusion, cultural democracy, music, research, and future possibilities. The book encourages questioning, reflection, and dialogue. Shaped as provocations and presented as eight stand-alone essays, each 'think piece' comprises of critical questions, concrete illustrations of practice, theoretical explorations, and reflective discussion. Flanked by a historical map and a closing statement, the book provides a springboard for conceptual interrogation about participatory music-making. Supported by the lineage of poststructural philosophy, ideas emulating from Derrida and Deleuze frames conceptual interrogation about community music practices and the broader parameters of social-cultural music-making and music teaching and learning. As a vital part of the music ecology, community music is a distinctive field and a critical lens to view other musical practices and the various political and cultural policies that frame them.

Memento mori—remember death—this is how the medieval monks exhort us. Our life, given in birth and taken by death, is radically marked by finitude, which can be a source of great fear and anguish. Our finitude, however, does not in itself need to be something negative. It confronts us with the question of our life’s meaning and spurs us on to treasure our days. Our contingency, as evidenced in our birth and death, reminds us that we have not made ourselves and that there is nothing necessary about the marvelous fact that we exist. Particularly from a Judeo-Christian perspective, embracing our finitude will mean gratefully accepting life as a completely gratuitous gift and living one’s days informed by a sense of this gratitude.