This article has two main currents. First, it argues that an affinity or similarity can be identified between the philosophy of Gianni Vattimo (so-called Weak Thinking) and the Discourse Theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The two theorizations are engaged with related problems, but have conceptualized them differently; they share central insights, but understand them with different vocabularies. The article furthermore illuminates in what this affinity consists, and it discusses the differences and similarities between the two theoretical positions. The second current of the article takes the postmodern philosophical problems of anti-foundationalism and nihilism as its point of departure. It raises the questions of: 1) how it is possible at the same time to take the critique of universality and objectivity serious and still believe in the value of ethics and science and, 2) how we are to understand emancipation if there is no necessary relationship between truth and freedom. The article investigates the status, meaning and interconnection of the categories of truth, knowledge, ethics, politics and emancipation in the light of an absence of metaphysical first principles. The article concludes that: A) faith can constitute a "weak foundation" of knowledge and ethics and, B) nihilism can be combined with the political and ethical ambitions of universal human emancipation and radical democracy.
KEYWORDS: Vattimo, Laclau, Mouffe, weak thinking, discourse theory, social constructiovism, hermeneutics, nihilism, historicism, emancipation, truth, ethics, new radical left, Torino-school, Essex-school, postmodernism, post-modernity, anti-essentialism, post-metaphysics, anti-metaphysics, metaphysics, anti-foundationalism, enlightenment, anti-enlightenment, radical democracy
Artiklen er udgivet i online-tidsskriftet Nordicum-Mediterranium og kan læses i sin helhed på http://nome.unak.is/nm-marzo-2012/vol-7-n-3-2012. Skriv en e-mail til mig hvis De er interesseret i den dansksprogede udgave.
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