Abstract
This chapter engages Vattimo and Zabala’s Hermeneutic Communism from the standpoint of how it relates to a venerable tradition of ‘manifestos’. A typology of manifestos is offered and then the question is raised, to what extent we can fit Hermeneutic Communism within this tradition. The chapter also engages a questionable assumption of Hermeneutic Communism, namely the metaphysics of the end, which is announced as the end of metaphysics. This last point is elaborated vis-a-vis a reading of Rorty, which challenged the usefulness of philosophical manifestos for practical politics.
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Notes
- 1.
Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala, Hermeneutic Communism: From Heidegger to Marx (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). Henceforth references to this text will be noted in the body of the essay in parentheses.
- 2.
Umberto Eco, “On the Style of The Communist Manifesto” in Umberto Eco, On Literature (New York: A Harvest Book, 2004), 23–27.
- 3.
But the list of manifestos is not surprisingly long. Here is a link to a wonderful website that provides an alphabetical listing of the main manifestos or proclamations: http://www.manifestos.net/titles/
- 4.
See S. S. Prawer, Karl Marx and World Literature (New York: Verso, 2011 [1976]), an amazing text that traced every literary reference in Marx’s corpus, from the German Ideology to Das Kapital. The chapter on the drafting of the Manifesto is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand its rhetorical power. “World Literature and Class Conflict.”
- 5.
Eric Hobsbawn, “On the Communist Manifesto” in Eric Hobsbawn, How to Change the World: Reflections on Marx and Marxism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011), 110.
- 6.
Subcomandante Marcos, Our Word is our Weapon: Selected Writings, edited by Juana Ponce de León (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001), 13.
- 7.
Subcomandante Marcos, Our Word is our Weapon, 109–110.
- 8.
See Enrique Dussel, Politics of Liberation: A Critical World History, translated by Thia Cooper (London: SCM Press, 2011), 540–548.
- 9.
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Towards a New Manifesto (New York: Verso, 2011).
- 10.
Available on-line: http://nycga.cc/2011/09/30/declaration-of-the-occupation-of-new-york-city/
- 11.
Hans-George Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd Revised Edition (New York: Continuum, 1988), 474; Italics in original. See also Richard Rorty, “Being that Can be Understood is Language” in Bruce Krajewski, ed., Gadamer’s Repercussions: Reconsidering Philosophical Hermeneutics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 21–29.
- 12.
Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987), 141.
- 13.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.
- 14.
Richard Rorty, “The Philosopher and the Prophet” in Transition, No. 52 (1991), 70–78. The quote comes from page 75.
- 15.
See Richard Rorty, “Feminism and Pragmatism” in Richard Rorty, Truth and Progress. Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 202–227.
- 16.
Rorty, “Feminism and Pragmatism,” 214–215.
- 17.
Richard Rorty, Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself: Interview with Richard Rorty edited and introduced by Eduardo Mendieta (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006).
- 18.
See Karl-Otto Apel, Towards a Transcendental Semiotics: Selected Essays of Karl-Otto Apel. Volume 1 Edited and Introduced by Eduardo Mendieta with Preface by Karl-Otto Apel. (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1994).
- 19.
Haig A. Bosmajian, “A Rhetorical Approach to the Communist Manifesto” The Dalhousie Review, Vol. 43, No. 4 (1963–1964), 457–468.
- 20.
Eric Hobsbawn, “On the Communist Manifesto” in How to Change the World, 111.
- 21.
Haig A. Bosmajian, “A Rhetorical Approach to the Communist Manifesto”, 460–461.
- 22.
Vandana Shiva, ed., Manifestos on the Future of Food & Seed (Cambridge, Massachusetts: South End Press, 2007).
- 23.
Richard Rorty, “Justice as a larger loyalty” in Philosophy as Cultural Politics. Philosophical Papers, Volume 4 (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 44.
- 24.
Richard Rorty, “Feminism and Pragmatism” Truth and Progress, 223.
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Mendieta, E. (2017). The End of Metaphysics, the Uses and Abuses of Philosophy, and Understanding Just a Little Better: On Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala’s Hermeneutic Communism . In: Mazzini, S., Glyn-Williams, O. (eds) Making Communism Hermeneutical. Contributions to Hermeneutics, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59021-9_1
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