Abstract

Vattimo rethinks ontology at a time when modernity's concept of Being has been uprooted along with any faith in history as a unitary process characterized by progressive reappropriations of its own origins. Having dissolved the ground of the new, the end of modernity sees Being reduced to exchange value, the new for the sake of the new, which in turn science and technology make routine. The impasse is a radical one, for modernity cannot be left behind by offering a truer foundation, since "overcoming" and "foundation" themselves are concepts central to modernity. The first section of the book consists in an account of this condition.