What do you think?
La sociedad transparente
Con un prefacio del autor a la edición española
Los medios de comunicación de masas desempeñan un papel determinante en el nacimiento de la sociedad posmoderna. El incremento de estos medios, no obstante, no hace que la sociedad sea más "transparente", que esté más informada de sí misma, más iluminada: los mass media intentan reproducir los sucesos en el tiempo real, multiplicando su complejidad en vez de reducirla. La tesis de Vattimo es que justamente en este "caos" relativo es donde se hallan nuestras esperanzas de emancipación. La falta de transparencia no es pues un fenómeno que haya que combatir; al contrario, es el síntoma de un gran cambio de orientación en el que queda implicado todo el ámbito de la existencia: la liberación de las minorías (los punks, la mujer, los homosexuales, los negro?) y la creación de un nuevo "estado de ánimo": una experiencia cotidiana con caracteres más fluidos, que adquiere los rasgos de la oscilación, del desarraigo, del juego.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
172 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
About the author
Gianni Vattimo
139 books94 followersGianteresio Vattimo, also known as Gianni Vattimo (born January 4, 1936) is an internationally recognized Italian author, philosopher, and politician. Many of his works have been translated into English.
His philosophy can be characterized as postmodern with his emphasis on "pensiero debole" (weak thought). This requires that the foundational certainties of modernity with its emphasis on objective truth founded in a rational unitary subject be relinquished for a more multi-faceted conception closer to that of the arts.
His philosophy can be characterized as postmodern with his emphasis on "pensiero debole" (weak thought). This requires that the foundational certainties of modernity with its emphasis on objective truth founded in a rational unitary subject be relinquished for a more multi-faceted conception closer to that of the arts.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
December 19, 2017
Il testo racchiude alcuni saggi che riflettono sull'influenza dei media nel mondo contemporaneo.
Vattimo cerca di contrastare l'idea di Adorno che vede nei mass media uno strumento capace di imporre un pensiero unico. Infatti, secondo Vattimo, il mondo dei media ha reso possibile la compresenza di più voci contemporaneamente, disgregando la visione progressista occidentale della storia: infatti, l'Occidente ha creduto nel progresso perché si è sempre considerato la forma migliore e universale, alla quale tutti i popoli vorrebbero aspirare. Con la moltiplicazione dei punti di vista resa possibile dai media, tutto ciò si è rivelato essere illusorio: esistono altre culture e altre concezioni storiche che non per forza hanno come punto di riferimento il mondo Occidentale. Tale moltiplicazione ha reso possibile la diffusione del "relativismo", il quale però non ha cancellato il concetto di verità: semplicemente, questo viene ridimensionato. La verità è il contesto di ogni fabulazione del mondo, poiché non è più possibile avere un mondo ma solo racconti sul mondo stesso. Questi racconti, però, devono fare sempre i conti con il reale, che impedisce una totale derealizzazione da parte dei mass media, a volte auspicata e altre volte temuta.
L'arte, in questo contesto, diviene uno strumento che ha il compito di introdurre lo spaesamento, cioè di mostrare come ci sia sempre un divario tra il mondo (il racconto sull'esistente) e la terra (ciò che resiste alla narrazione del mondo, banalmente la realtà nuda e cruda). Allo stesso tempo, si assiste a un'estetizzazione del mondo, in cui ogni oggetto, anche quello più banale, viene reso ornamento e opera d'arte. Quindi scompare la distinzione tra oggetto artistico e oggetto utile, visto che anche l'utensile viene concepito per avere una sua valenza estetica.
Vattimo è radicale: concepisce la derealizzazione non come un pericolo, ma come un valore. Un valore che permetterebbe all'immaginario di essere completamente svincolato dalla contingenza, grazie alla natura "leggera" dei nuovi media. Ma Vattimo, molto lucidamente, sa che questa derealizzazione è ben lungi dall'essere reale: infatti, persistono contingenze di tipo economico che impediscono alla derealizzazione di compiersi. Quindi, affinché si abbia maggiore libertà, bisognerebbe accelerare e non limitare la derealizzazione, intesa come principio d'emancipazione delle coscienze che, finalmente, possono produrre elementi immaginari e teorici senza dover dar conto a questioni materiali.
Vattimo cerca di contrastare l'idea di Adorno che vede nei mass media uno strumento capace di imporre un pensiero unico. Infatti, secondo Vattimo, il mondo dei media ha reso possibile la compresenza di più voci contemporaneamente, disgregando la visione progressista occidentale della storia: infatti, l'Occidente ha creduto nel progresso perché si è sempre considerato la forma migliore e universale, alla quale tutti i popoli vorrebbero aspirare. Con la moltiplicazione dei punti di vista resa possibile dai media, tutto ciò si è rivelato essere illusorio: esistono altre culture e altre concezioni storiche che non per forza hanno come punto di riferimento il mondo Occidentale. Tale moltiplicazione ha reso possibile la diffusione del "relativismo", il quale però non ha cancellato il concetto di verità: semplicemente, questo viene ridimensionato. La verità è il contesto di ogni fabulazione del mondo, poiché non è più possibile avere un mondo ma solo racconti sul mondo stesso. Questi racconti, però, devono fare sempre i conti con il reale, che impedisce una totale derealizzazione da parte dei mass media, a volte auspicata e altre volte temuta.
L'arte, in questo contesto, diviene uno strumento che ha il compito di introdurre lo spaesamento, cioè di mostrare come ci sia sempre un divario tra il mondo (il racconto sull'esistente) e la terra (ciò che resiste alla narrazione del mondo, banalmente la realtà nuda e cruda). Allo stesso tempo, si assiste a un'estetizzazione del mondo, in cui ogni oggetto, anche quello più banale, viene reso ornamento e opera d'arte. Quindi scompare la distinzione tra oggetto artistico e oggetto utile, visto che anche l'utensile viene concepito per avere una sua valenza estetica.
Vattimo è radicale: concepisce la derealizzazione non come un pericolo, ma come un valore. Un valore che permetterebbe all'immaginario di essere completamente svincolato dalla contingenza, grazie alla natura "leggera" dei nuovi media. Ma Vattimo, molto lucidamente, sa che questa derealizzazione è ben lungi dall'essere reale: infatti, persistono contingenze di tipo economico che impediscono alla derealizzazione di compiersi. Quindi, affinché si abbia maggiore libertà, bisognerebbe accelerare e non limitare la derealizzazione, intesa come principio d'emancipazione delle coscienze che, finalmente, possono produrre elementi immaginari e teorici senza dover dar conto a questioni materiali.
October 19, 2015
"La posmodernidad es mazo de complicada, tú"
Gianni Vattimo. Cita aproximada.
Gianni Vattimo. Cita aproximada.
January 10, 2018
dens, de recitit în viitorul nu-foarte-îndepărtat.
July 11, 2024
THE ITALIAN PHILOSOPHER LOOKS AT POSTMODERNISM, THE MASS MEDIA, ETC.
Gianteresio [“Gianni”] Vattimo (born 1936) is an Italian philosopher (who taught at the University of Turin, and elsewhere) and a member of the European Parliament; he is also openly gay.
He wrote in the first chapter of this 1989 book, “Much is said about postmodernity nowadays. So much, in fact, that it has become almost obligatory to distance oneself from the notion … It is my belief, however, that the term ‘postmodern’ has a meaning, and that this meaning is linked to the fact that the society in which we live is a society of generalized communication. It is the society of mass media. In the first place, we speak of the postmodern because we feel that, in some essential way, modernity is over… Broadly speaking, this eulogy to being modern is what, in my view, characterizes the whole of modern culture… According to the hypothesis I am putting forward, modernity ends when---for a number of reasons---it no longer seems possible to regard history as unilinear. Such a view requires the existence of a centre around which events are gathered and ordered.” (Pg. 1-2)
He continues, “Along with the end of colonialism and imperialism, another decisive factor in both the dissolution of the idea of history and of the end of modernity is the advent of the society of communication. Here I come to my second point, which concerns the ‘transparent society.’ It will not have gone unnoticed that the expression ‘transparent society’ has been introduced here with a question mark. What I am proposing is: (a) that the mass media play a decisive role in the birth of a postmodern society; (b) that they do not make this postmodern society more ‘transparent,’ but more complex, even chaotic; and finally (c) that it is in precisely this relative ‘chaos’ that our hopes for emancipation lie.” (Pg. 4)
He suggests, “The self-transparency to which we are at present being led by the ensemble of media and sciences seems to be nothing more than the exposure of pluralism, of the mechanisms and inner fabric of our culture. Even at its best, the media-human sciences complex is emancipatory only inasmuch as it places us in a world less univocal, less certain and so also much less reassuring than that of myth. It is the world for which Nietzsche invented the figure of the Übermensch, the overman, a new human subject to which philosophy responds by way of what may now justifiably be called the hermeneutical turn.” (Pg. 26-27)
He observes, “Ultimately, the theory of limited rationality, that is, the general idea that myth as knowledge in narrative form is a type of thought adequate to certain fields of experience (mass culture, interior life, historiography), also lays aside the problem of defining its own historical situation. It is unaware of its foundation on a tacit acceptance of the distinction between [Nature and the Humanities]; and this distinction has become increasingly problematic with the recognition that exact science is itself a social enterprise, and that the objectifying methods of the natural sciences are themselves, therefore, set entirely within the field of the socio-historical sciences.” (Pg. 38-39)
He asserts, “When history became, or tended towards, universal history---as the excluded, mute and repressed found their voices---it became impossible to think of it as genuinely universal, as unilinear and directed ultimately towards emancipation. Even from an aesthetic perspective, utopia implied a framework of universal history as unilinear. Yet utopia has disappeared, even from aesthetics, with the advent of a certain ‘universality’ in the channels different models of value and recognition have found to express themselves. As regards aesthetic experience and its relation to everyday life, art has not simply ‘retreated’ to its place within the modern canon. In addition, a modern aesthetic experience has taken shape in the combined voices raised by communitarian systems of recognition and communities that show, express and recognize themselves in different myths and formal models.” (Pg. 67-68)
After discussing a variety of philosophers (e.g., Gadamer, Apel, Habermas), he observes, “from the point of view of hermeneutics, these positions propose, at least implicitly, the restoration of metaphysics. This is not solely, or not so much, because the subject whose transparency is to be promoted … is modelled on the subject of metaphysics and modern scientism, whose ultimate form is that of full self-consciousness. Above all, it is because the normative ideal of unrestricted communication displays its categorical character in its recognition of an essential structure, holding for every historical experience, but itself withdrawn from becoming.” (Pg. 109-110)
He concludes, “To the extent that hermeneutics recognizes itself as provenance and destiny, as the thought of the final epoch of metaphysics and thus of nihilism, it can find in ‘negativity,’ in dissolution as the ‘destiny of Being,’ given not as presence of the ‘arche’ but only as provenance, the orienting principle that enables it to realize its own original inclination for ethics whilst neither restoring metaphysics nor surrendering to the futility of a relativistic philosophy of culture.” (Pg. 119)
Those interested in non-analytic contemporary philosophy (e.g., Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard, Lyotard) will find much to appreciate in this book.
Gianteresio [“Gianni”] Vattimo (born 1936) is an Italian philosopher (who taught at the University of Turin, and elsewhere) and a member of the European Parliament; he is also openly gay.
He wrote in the first chapter of this 1989 book, “Much is said about postmodernity nowadays. So much, in fact, that it has become almost obligatory to distance oneself from the notion … It is my belief, however, that the term ‘postmodern’ has a meaning, and that this meaning is linked to the fact that the society in which we live is a society of generalized communication. It is the society of mass media. In the first place, we speak of the postmodern because we feel that, in some essential way, modernity is over… Broadly speaking, this eulogy to being modern is what, in my view, characterizes the whole of modern culture… According to the hypothesis I am putting forward, modernity ends when---for a number of reasons---it no longer seems possible to regard history as unilinear. Such a view requires the existence of a centre around which events are gathered and ordered.” (Pg. 1-2)
He continues, “Along with the end of colonialism and imperialism, another decisive factor in both the dissolution of the idea of history and of the end of modernity is the advent of the society of communication. Here I come to my second point, which concerns the ‘transparent society.’ It will not have gone unnoticed that the expression ‘transparent society’ has been introduced here with a question mark. What I am proposing is: (a) that the mass media play a decisive role in the birth of a postmodern society; (b) that they do not make this postmodern society more ‘transparent,’ but more complex, even chaotic; and finally (c) that it is in precisely this relative ‘chaos’ that our hopes for emancipation lie.” (Pg. 4)
He suggests, “The self-transparency to which we are at present being led by the ensemble of media and sciences seems to be nothing more than the exposure of pluralism, of the mechanisms and inner fabric of our culture. Even at its best, the media-human sciences complex is emancipatory only inasmuch as it places us in a world less univocal, less certain and so also much less reassuring than that of myth. It is the world for which Nietzsche invented the figure of the Übermensch, the overman, a new human subject to which philosophy responds by way of what may now justifiably be called the hermeneutical turn.” (Pg. 26-27)
He observes, “Ultimately, the theory of limited rationality, that is, the general idea that myth as knowledge in narrative form is a type of thought adequate to certain fields of experience (mass culture, interior life, historiography), also lays aside the problem of defining its own historical situation. It is unaware of its foundation on a tacit acceptance of the distinction between [Nature and the Humanities]; and this distinction has become increasingly problematic with the recognition that exact science is itself a social enterprise, and that the objectifying methods of the natural sciences are themselves, therefore, set entirely within the field of the socio-historical sciences.” (Pg. 38-39)
He asserts, “When history became, or tended towards, universal history---as the excluded, mute and repressed found their voices---it became impossible to think of it as genuinely universal, as unilinear and directed ultimately towards emancipation. Even from an aesthetic perspective, utopia implied a framework of universal history as unilinear. Yet utopia has disappeared, even from aesthetics, with the advent of a certain ‘universality’ in the channels different models of value and recognition have found to express themselves. As regards aesthetic experience and its relation to everyday life, art has not simply ‘retreated’ to its place within the modern canon. In addition, a modern aesthetic experience has taken shape in the combined voices raised by communitarian systems of recognition and communities that show, express and recognize themselves in different myths and formal models.” (Pg. 67-68)
After discussing a variety of philosophers (e.g., Gadamer, Apel, Habermas), he observes, “from the point of view of hermeneutics, these positions propose, at least implicitly, the restoration of metaphysics. This is not solely, or not so much, because the subject whose transparency is to be promoted … is modelled on the subject of metaphysics and modern scientism, whose ultimate form is that of full self-consciousness. Above all, it is because the normative ideal of unrestricted communication displays its categorical character in its recognition of an essential structure, holding for every historical experience, but itself withdrawn from becoming.” (Pg. 109-110)
He concludes, “To the extent that hermeneutics recognizes itself as provenance and destiny, as the thought of the final epoch of metaphysics and thus of nihilism, it can find in ‘negativity,’ in dissolution as the ‘destiny of Being,’ given not as presence of the ‘arche’ but only as provenance, the orienting principle that enables it to realize its own original inclination for ethics whilst neither restoring metaphysics nor surrendering to the futility of a relativistic philosophy of culture.” (Pg. 119)
Those interested in non-analytic contemporary philosophy (e.g., Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard, Lyotard) will find much to appreciate in this book.
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July 30, 2013"Amongst the many definitions, there is one that may be generally agreed upon: modernity is the epoch in which simply being modern became a decisive value in itself."
September 13, 2026
This was alright. Vattimo makes some good points but this book is incredibly 90s and frankly could have been written decades earlier. He speaks of a society of generalized communication (with its concurrent terms of equalization, universalization, transparency, disenchantment, etc.) yet ironically does not think much about whether that statement holds across the globe. He has a quasi-materialist understanding of how technology (computing and ICTs in particular) shapes the social and the function of communication, but it’s a strangely apolitical understanding, not unlike Heidegger, who undergirds much of Vattimo’s thought. Of course, he’s working within a particular tradition (of hermeneutics, Western metaphysics, and critical theory), but I still feel his argument suffers severely from a lack in transnational scope. For instance, he makes passing references to colonialism, institutional violence, etc., but still privileges “generalized communication” as a facet of (post)modernity without second thought to the uneven distribution of communication across the globe.
By hiding in this world of metaphysics, Vattimo detracts significantly from what could be said about how communication actually functions and circulates in the global economy, beyond this abstract notion of “generalization.” He assumes globalization involves a ubiquitous rise in transparency tout court without thought to how transparency is unevenly distributed. This assumed universality of transparentization, against the backdrop of an opacity more or less incidental and/or a still universally-shared alienation (“the opacity of an existence conditioned by the division of labour, neuroses, various forms of institutional violence, etc.”) fails to contend with the violence both of transparentization (as Édouard Glissant demonstrates) and opacification (as, arguably, Jasbir Puar shows). I think Arjun Appadurai’s work on mediascapes and ideoscapes as disjunctive flows (which came out before Vattimo’s book!) provides a helpful corrective to the abstract universalist understanding of communicative reciprocity and transparency that Vattimo unwittingly adopts.
Again, this book makes some good points, and the chapters on utopia I found most interesting, albeit less related to his overall thesis. But I really am not a fan of this Eurocentric stuff; by failing to contend with the materiality of contradiction (or disjuncture, maybe) bolstering the globalization of ICTs, he ends up arguing for a kind of liberal diversity-politics that fails to contend with its own unevenness.
By hiding in this world of metaphysics, Vattimo detracts significantly from what could be said about how communication actually functions and circulates in the global economy, beyond this abstract notion of “generalization.” He assumes globalization involves a ubiquitous rise in transparency tout court without thought to how transparency is unevenly distributed. This assumed universality of transparentization, against the backdrop of an opacity more or less incidental and/or a still universally-shared alienation (“the opacity of an existence conditioned by the division of labour, neuroses, various forms of institutional violence, etc.”) fails to contend with the violence both of transparentization (as Édouard Glissant demonstrates) and opacification (as, arguably, Jasbir Puar shows). I think Arjun Appadurai’s work on mediascapes and ideoscapes as disjunctive flows (which came out before Vattimo’s book!) provides a helpful corrective to the abstract universalist understanding of communicative reciprocity and transparency that Vattimo unwittingly adopts.
Again, this book makes some good points, and the chapters on utopia I found most interesting, albeit less related to his overall thesis. But I really am not a fan of this Eurocentric stuff; by failing to contend with the materiality of contradiction (or disjuncture, maybe) bolstering the globalization of ICTs, he ends up arguing for a kind of liberal diversity-politics that fails to contend with its own unevenness.
January 1, 2026
Actually 3,5 ⭐️
March 6, 2013
An ambitious and successful I dare say meta-analysis of various philosophies concerning postmodernity, not necessarily postmodernist by themselves, ranging from metaphysics to aesthetics and mass media, condensed to form again I dare say a defense of postmodernism.
January 23, 2008
Where is my underlined and ear-marked copy? New York?
March 14, 2014
Solid read, but at 6 years old it's getting to be a bit dated.
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