10.13135/2036-542X/8066
application/pdf
2036-542X
8066
1
en
Alberto Martinengo
Trópos
ShouldWe Renounce Hegel? From Existentialism to Hermeneutics
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos
12
Monografica
2019-12-01
2023-08-16
2019-12-01
2023-08-16
65-75
1
Alberto Martinengo
2019/12/01
10.13135/2036-542X/8066
65
Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy
2036-542X
1
75
ShouldWe Renounce Hegel? From Existentialism to Hermeneutics
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12
                                                                                    trópos – ISBN 978-88-255-2800-8
                                                             DOI 10.4399/97888255280087 – pag. 65-75 (dicembre 2019)




                                  Should We Renounce Hegel?
                           From Existentialism to Hermeneutics
                                                                        A M*




    Abstract
    Renoncer à Hegel is the motto that defines Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics in his Time
    and Narrative. This sort of “parricide” draws the boundaries between hermeneuti-
    cal rationality and Hegelian reason. Ricoeur’s words capture very well how phil-
    osophical hermeneutics understood itself in the s, a historical phase in which
    that tradition showed its fully disruptive power towards modernity. This was the
    case with Italian hermeneutics which, much more than its French counterpart,
    found a positive resonance in reflections on postmodernism. The present essay
    deals with some of the most relevant representatives of that debate: Luigi Pareyson,
    Valerio Verra, and Gianni Vattimo. The aim is to show that the chapter on Hegel is
    fully part of the origin and history of Italian philosophical hermeneutics, far beyond
    the narrow limits of early twentieth–century Hegelianism.
    Keywords: Hegel, Pareyson, Verra, Vattimo, Existentialism, Hermeneutics.



. The Origin of Hermeneutics: A Parricide

In the third volume of Time and Narrative (), Paul Ricoeur dedicates
a few chapters to the “totalization of time” in fictional narrative, that is,
to the particular re–configuration of the past, present, and future that a
narrative is able to produce. The crucial part of the analysis has two slightly
different titles in the French original and in the English translation by
Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Ricoeur chooses a title that also
functions as a “watchword” for his theoretical proposal: Renoncer à Hegel
[Renouncing Hegel]. Instead, the translators opted for a problematic question:
“Should we renounce Hegel?». Whichever way it is inflected, Ricoeur’s
reference to Hegel — as in a sort of parricide — is strategic in drawing the
boundaries that separate “hermeneutical rationality” from Hegelian reason:
    ∗
        Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy. a.martinengo@gmail.com.
     . Jérôme de Gramont, “Ricoeur. Entre paradis perdu et terre promise,” Phasis. European Journal
of Philosophy VI,  (): .


                                                                                                                
      Alberto Martinengo


these boundaries are drawn along the ridge between philosophy, history
and temporality. Ricoeur formulates his thesis as follows:


     Intellectual honesty demands the confession that, for us, the loss of credibility the
     Hegelian philosophy of history has undergone has the significance of an event in
     thinking, concerning which we may say neither that we brought it about nor that
     it simply happened, and concerning which we do not know if it is indicative of
     a catastrophe that still is crippling us or a deliverance whose glory we dare not
     celebrate — and he adds that — the leaving behind of Hegelianism [. . . ] appears
     to us, after the fact, as a kind of beginning, or even as an origin.



    Ricoeur’s words capture very well how philosophical hermeneutics
understood itself in the s, a historical phase in which, especially in
some cultural contexts, that tradition showed its disruptive power towards
modernity, that is, towards the line that connects Descartes to Hegel. This
was the case with Italian hermeneutics, which, much more than its French
counterpart, found a positive resonance in reflections on postmodernism,
creating the conditions for an original path in the philosophical debates
of the late twentieth century. Gianni Vattimo was the key figure in this
respect. On the one hand, he reconsidered Nietzsche’s and Heidegger’s
analyses of “Western metaphysics” and, on the other hand, he radicalized
the philosophical debate on the end of modernity: these are the two lines
that, crossing each other, make that philosophical period still recognizable
today, thirty years later.
    However, as soon as one takes a step beyond watchwords and blurred
images, one realizes that the chapter on Hegel is fully part of the origin and
history of Italian philosophical hermeneutics. And this history is marked by
a series of ambiguities and deviations whose most appropriate title might
not be the affirmative of the French original of Time and Narrative but, more
likely, the English translation that comes with a question mark: “Should we
renounce Hegel?”


     . Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), , .
     . Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, .
     . The first pages of Vattimo’s The End of Modernity read: “Indeed, the scattered and often
incoherent theories of post–modernity only acquire rigor and philosophical credibility when seen
in relation to the Nietzschean problematic of the eternal return and the Heideggerian problematic
of the overcoming of metaphysics. At the same time, if Nietzsche’s and Heidegger’s philosophical
intuitions are to appear once and for all irreducible to the kind of Kulturkritik that permeates all early
twentieth–century philosophy and culture, they may do so only in relation to those things that are
revealed by post–modern reflection on the new conditions of existence in the late industrial world”;
see Gianni Vattimo, The End of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, ), .
                                                           Should We Renounce Hegel?          


. Reconsidering Finitude

The relationship between Hegel and Italian philosophical hermeneutics is
based on the debates through which existentialism took root in Italy. Luigi
Pareyson was the main protagonist of these debates, at least in the s.
His personalism revolves around the redefinition of the relation between
the finite and the infinite, with Hegelianism as the point of polemical con-
frontation. As Maurizio Pagano explains in a long article that reconstructs
Hegel’s presence throughout Pareyson’s reflection, in this initial phase, “the
central points of his discussion were, on the one hand, the assertion of the
value of the finite, understood as an individual or better as a person, and,
on the other, a new understanding of transcendence.” A second element
of rupture was then added to this focus on finitude, which Pareyson em-
braced in the wake of Kierkegaard and Barth, as well as through direct
relationships with Gabriel Marcel and Karl Jaspers: it was the interpreta-
tion of existentialism as a historical response to the crisis of rationalism —
therefore something similar to the event in thinking described by Ricoeur.
Referring to the immediate post–war period, Pagano explains:
   If we want to open up a new path, we must first assess the path that has led society
   and culture to the present, and into the disaster of war. In this context, the diagnosis
   that emerges is that of a crisis of the past culture; and existentialism is usually
   referred to as “philosophy of crisis.” According to Pareyson, what is on the agenda
   is the crisis of the rationalistic strand of modern thought, that is, of the path that
   goes from Descartes to Hegel. For this reason [Hegel’s] thought is at the center of
   the crisis and of the debate that aims to overcome it.

    The step beyond the “crisis” is precisely represented by the philosophy
of the person, which Pareyson systematizes in Esistenza e persona (Existence
and Person, ). Its main axis is the incommensurability between the finite
and the infinite. Contrary to contemporary versions of existentialism, the
finite and the infinite here are not bound by a form of implication, that is,
by mutual co–belonging — which Pareyson still sees as a “crypto–Hegelian
residue.” On the contrary, they are two unrelated elements and, on this
basis, they make room for a philosophy of the finite as independent from
the infinite.
    However, Pareyson’s business with Hegel did not finish here. It continued
underground throughout the following phase of Pareyson’s thought, which
dealt with aesthetics and, from there, paved the way to his philosophical
   . Maurizio Pagano, “Presenza di Hegel nel pensiero di Luigi Pareyson,” Archivio di filosofia
LXXXV,  (): .
   . Pagano, “Presenza di Hegel,” .
   . Pagano, “Presenza di Hegel,” –.
      Alberto Martinengo


hermeneutics. The most important stage of this period was undoubtedly
manifest in the work Estetica. Teoria della formatività (Aesthetics: A Theory of
Formativity, ), in which the reference to Hegel becomes indirect and, to
a large extent, implicit. The theoretical background of the book is in fact
the tradition of aesthetics that starts with Benedetto Croce. In his preface to
the fourth edition of the book (), Pareyson makes a significant remark:
“Rather than lingering over an umpteenth critique of Croce’s aesthetics, this
book goes straight to the point, proposing, in place of Croce’s principles of
intuition and expression, an aesthetics of production and formativity.” This
sort of “interdiction against Croce” fully marks Pareyson’s “role in the Italian
aesthetics of the twentieth century,” to borrow the title of an essay by Paolo
D’Angelo. Yet, when Pareyson mentions Croce, the reader knows that what
he says counts as a synecdoche: it applies not only for Croce and his aesthetics
but also for Hegel’s system as a whole, starting from absolute Spirit. This
triangulation, which calls into question the tradition that prevailed in Italy in
the first half of the twentieth century, deserves to be explored in depth because
it contains fundamental elements of Pareyson’s future hermeneutical shift.


. An Alternative to Hegel

In an essay entitled “Pareyson e Hegel (Pareyson and Hegel),” Mauro
Bozzetti writes that Pareyson’s personalistic existentialism was above all
a “resumption of the dissolution of Hegelianism”. In other words, it
amounted to breaking away from the contemporary cultural and academic
context, and to doing so in a specific way — a way that, in Pareyson’s
view, had historical, almost epochal, relevance. The decision not to start
a polemical confrontation with Croce’s legacy confirms the significance
of his proposal. In his  preface, Pareyson reaffirms that his intention
is to seek out new paths of thought; paths that — as stated by Francesco
Tomatis — would enable him to “reinterpret and entirely reconstruct the
history of contemporary philosophy and find ‘an alternative theoretical line
to Hegel’ .
    This preliminary decision was radical and would underlie most of
Pareyson’s philosophical hermeneutics. In his perspective, existentialism

      . Luigi Pareyson, Estetica. Teoria della formatività (Milan: Bompiani, ), .
      . Paolo D’Angelo, “Il ruolo di Luigi Pareyson nell’estetica italiana del Novecento,” Annuario
filosofico  (): .
     . Mauro Bozzetti, “Pareyson e Hegel,” in Luigi Pareyson tra ermeneutica e ontologia della libertà,
ed. Giuseppe Riconda and Ezio Gamba (Turin: Trauben, ), .
     . Francesco Tomatis, Pareyson. Vita, filosofia, Bibliografia (Brescia: Morcelliana, ),  (em-
phasis mine).
                                                              Should We Renounce Hegel?   


did not presuppose revisions, corrections, mutilations or reversals of the
Hegelian system, but a break that eliminated any complicity whatsoever
with that model. So much so that, for Pareyson, nineteenth–century Ger-
man existentialism itself was not yet sufficiently distanced from Hegel and
had to be criticized: in fact, to Pareyson it was “anti–Hegelian and Hegelian
at the same time” , that is to say, it considered Hegel as a literally unsurpass-
able point of modern philosophy. In Pareyson’s personalist existentialism,
instead, this shift could finally be taken to the extreme. This happened by at-
tributing a new role to Fichte and Schelling, who are fundamental references
for Pareyson’s personalism and hermeneutics. According to his perspective,
Fichte and Schelling could in fact be qualified as both pre–Hegelian and
post–Hegelian philosophers. This view, like Schelling’s characterization as a
post–Heideggerian thinker that frequently recurs in Pareyson’s writings, par-
ticularly in Esistenza e persona and, later, in Verità e interpretazione (Truth and
Interpretation, ), was no simple provocation. The theoretically prepara-
tory move of hermeneutics — that is, personalistic existentialism — was in
fact a way to decompose and recompose the philosophical tradition. Hence,
the possibility of drawing unexpected and deliberately anachronistic lines
of continuity and discontinuity.
    On this basis, the core of Pareyson’s existentialism lies in the thesis that
the person — my finite, incarnate, and historically situated person — is not
merely negativity, but a perspective that opens onto truth. The person is a
concrete dialectic of opposites — finite and infinite, activity and passivity
— and is the place where the universal meets history. The aesthetic theme
is also embedded in this encounter. In its pre–philosophical inspiration,
Pareyson’s theory of art as formativity is an appeal to look at the concrete-
ness of the artistic experience. Despite its continuity with Esistenza e persona,
it would be wrong to consider formativity as the application to aesthetics of
a theoretical model elaborated elsewhere, that is, of a philosophical system
presupposed for its exercise in the aesthetic field. If anything, it is the other
way around: Pareyson developed his alternative to the Hegel–Croce lignée
precisely through the concrete problem of artistic experience, and more
markedly than in personalist existentialism. Hence, incidentally, his par-
ticularly original attention to poetics, which would return several times in
the tradition started by Pareyson, for example in Gianni Vattimo. Following
a typically anti–Crocean line shared with some other authors (especially
Antonio Banfi and Luciano Anceschi), poetics becomes for Pareyson the
effective tool with which philosophy could reasonably penetrate the con-
creteness of artistic practice while respecting its principles, that is, without
overwriting them with extra–artistic assumptions.

   . Pareyson, Esistenza e persona (Genoa: il Melangolo, ), .
       Alberto Martinengo


    After all, the problem of presuppositions is not only a premise of the
theory of formativity, but it is its very heart, albeit in a different sense. When,
at the beginning of the section entitled “Attempt and Success,” Pareyson
presented the famous definition of formativity as “such a doing that, while
doing, “invents the way of doing,” he was thinking of a specific aspect of
human experience exemplified by the production of artistic forms: not the
production according to predetermined principles, but the formative activity
that creates its own rules. Here is the point: “conceiving by performing,”
that is “inventing by doing,” is the key with which Pareyson rediscovered
the connection with the concreteness of artistic production. From now on,
this theme would be a full part of the discussion about artistic creativity and
improvisation, but for Pareyson it was above all the tool to give substance
to his specific departure from Croce’s aesthetic: a departure that implied
changing the entire horizon of philosophically relevant questions.


. Historicizing the Truth

Also in aesthetics, therefore, the core question for Pareyson remained that
of Esistenza e persona, namely the role of the finite, or rather of that finite
singularity that I am. A singularity that, in Estetica. Teoria della formatività,
finds in art–making the way to the problem of truth as interpretation.
After all, the problem of truth is the common thread through which Luigi
Pareyson read, disputed, and recovered Hegel in the different phases of his
reflection. He did so in a key that, already in Esistenza e persona, attributes to
philosophy some fundamental questions that touch on the problem of truth:
“Does the recognition of the essential multiplicity of philosophies threaten
the uniqueness of truth? Is it possible to have a pluralistic but not relativistic
conception of truth? What is the point of view expressed by a perspectival
position that reconciles the uniqueness of truth with the multiplicity of

    . Pareyson, Estetica. Teoria della formatività, .
    . Mauro Bozzetti insists on Pareyson’s definition of “person”: “For Pareyson the historical
subject is man, for Hegel it is people, epochs, or kingdoms within which the subjects can redeem
themselves only by understanding their time and making themselves understood by their time.”
What is at stake in the rift between the two views is the relationship between the subjective spirit
and the objective spirit. To what kind of “person” does Pareyson’s existentialism refer? It is evident
that from a Hegelian point of view, Pareyson’s “person” is a notion that has not attained the objective
spirit, let alone produced a synthesis of subjectivity and objectivity. It is not at all the personality of
Science of Logic. It is not “the individual, the concrete, the subject” which is the result rather than
the beginning. It is not the pure personality of which Science of Logic speaks: “The highest, most
concentrated point is the pure personality which, solely through the absolute dialectic which is its
nature, no less embraces and holds everything within itself, because it makes itself the supremely
free — the simplicity which is the first immediacy and Universality,” G.W.F. Hegel, Science of Logic
(London: George Allen & Unwin, ), § , .
                                                                  Should We Renounce Hegel?             


its formulations?”. To put it more bluntly: Is it possible to think of a
notion of truth as an interpretation that is historically connoted, but is not
exhausted in history? As previously mentioned, this relationship between
history and truth is the result of a view by which Hegelianism erases
historicity in its concreteness and nineteenth–century anti–Hegelianism
distorts it. However, the history of Italian hermeneutics unfolds along a time
period in which the relationship with Hegel varied sometimes significantly:
by the end of that period, Pareyson’s position changed to the point of being
fully overturned.
    In fact, in the s, the same period in which Pareyson’s existentialism
moved into a non–Hegelian philosophical hermeneutics, another approach
appeared, whose Italian birthplace was still Turin but whose destination
became Karl Löwith’s and Hans–Georg Gadamer’s Heidelberg — an envi-
ronment obviously different from Jaspers’ and Pareyson’s. In this case, the
key figure was Valerio Verra. Verra’s contribution to Hegelian studies in
Italy is in fact inseparable from the hermeneutical perspective in which his
contribution developed. And vice versa: his role in the Italian hermeneutic
debate consists above all in explicitly reopening the dialogue with Hegel —
that is, in embracing the objective of doing philosophy (and therefore also
philosophical hermeneutics) an und mit Hegel, as is often mentioned.
    The distance between Pareyson and Verra can already be seen in their re-
spective historical–philosophical texts. As said earlier, Payerson’s goal was
to break the unitary logic of development that goes from post–Kantianism
to Hegelianism. Verra instead re–attributed a decisive role to Hegel and
did so — here is the intersection between history of philosophy and phil-
osophical hermeneutics — by enhancing the dialogic dimension of di-
alectics. His  article titled “Rinascita Schellinghiana? (A Schellingean

     . Pareyson, Esistenza e persona, .
     . The following phase of Pareyson’s reflection, which took place in the s, was a chapter in
its own right, and was the basis of the texts collected in Ontologia della libertà (Ontology of Freedom,
). This was also a fundamental moment for his relationship with Hegel, which then resumed,
particularly in relation to the dialectic. Indeed, Pareyson wrote: “Hegel is right: the heart of reality is
the dialectic”; however, he also wrote that “Hegel sent this great intuition in a misleading direction,
falling into a catastrophic error” and the catastrophe was the Aufhebung of the negative by means of
necessity; see L. Pareyson, Ontologia della libertà, Turin: Einaudi, , . On these aspects, see once
more Pagano, Presenza di Hegel nel pensiero di Luigi Pareyson, –.
     . See for example Claudio Cesa, “Per Valerio Verra,” Studi kantiani XIV (): . Cesa is the
editor of the posthumous collection that today is the fundamental reference text for a comprehensive
overview of Verra’s Hegelian research; see Valerio Verra, “Su Hegel,” (Bologna: il Mulino, ).
     . Riconda, “Valerio Verra e l’ambiente filosofico torinese”, Rivista di filosofia XCIV,  ():
 ff. On the distance between the “Turin philosophy” and Hegel, see also Rossi, “Alla riscoperta di
Hegel”, Rivista di filosofia XCIV,  (): , with references to Guzzo and Abbagnano on one side,
and to Solari and Bobbio on the other.
     . Riconda, “Valerio Verra e l’ambiente filosofico torinese”, .
      Alberto Martinengo


Renaissance?”) already signals the distrust that, for him, hinders the adequate
understanding of Hegelian philosophy .
    Gianni Vattimo reconstructs the context in more explicit terms: for Verra,
Hegel is the master “of the radical historicity of the spirit that asserts itself
against every claim of metaphysical rationalism,” that is, against those same
claims that, conversely, Pareyson’s hermeneutics faced by choosing existen-
tialism . From Vattimo’s perspective, in short, the appeal to historicity —
of knowledge, of experience, of being — is the unifying trait of the nascent
Italian philosophical hermeneutics. A trait that however, perhaps paradoxi-
cally, Verra and Pareyson inflected in opposite ways with respect to Hegel:
Pareyson abandoned Croce and Hegelianism altogether; Verra rediscovered
Hegel and promoted a profound renewal of his early twentieth–century
reception.
    Yet this diversity cannot be fully understood without bringing Hans–
Georg Gadamer into play. Indeed, his role was essential, and not only for the
biographical circumstances that bind Verra to Heidelberg and make him the
first “ambassador” of Gadamer in our country. More generally, the impact
of Truth and Method in Italy definitely contributed to shifting the balance,
and it is no coincidence that the Italian translation — signed by Vattimo
himself — was one of the first to be published, in . In short, the book
had a remarkable and relatively rapid diffusion, whose core was precisely
the theme of the historicity of truth. And there are two sides to this coin:
on the one hand, by completely rewriting the problem of the objective
Spirit, Truth and Method strengthened and sanctioned the possibility of a
“different” Hegel, as posited by Verra already in the s; on the other
hand, its rewriting was linked to the more complex fate of hermeneutics in
Italy and should be seen as a non–secondary element, especially in relation
to Vattimo’s thought.


. Hegel and the Avantgardes

Now that Verra’s position has been clarified, it is useful to shift the attention
to the other side of the debate. In fact, although Vattimo claimed on several
occasions that weak thought derives from Pareyson’s hermeneutics, the gap
between the two lines of thought has become more and more significant
over the years. Their respective paths in opposite directions was progressive,

    . Valerio Verra, “Rinascita Schellinghiana?,” Il Pensiero  (): –. But at the end of the
s Verra’s path had only just begun, and from then on the gap between him and Pareyson would
widen further.
     . Gianni Vattimo, “Da Dewey a Hegel, attraverso Gadamer”, Rivista di filosofia XCIV,  ():
.
                                                            Should We Renounce Hegel?         


but unequivocal. Indeed, it can be clearly seen already in an early text like
Art’s Claim to Truth (), in which Pareyson’s anti–Crocean aesthetic pro-
gram and the opening towards Gadamer still coexist. In these pages, Vattimo
follows up on the face–to–face confrontation with the Hegelian tradition on
which Pareyson had chosen not to dwell. Indeed, Vattimo refers critically to
the “substantively Hegelian mindset” that appeared “dominant” in early
twentieth–century aesthetics. At the same time, however, this confrontation
does not lead to a confirmation of Pareyson’s position, but to a path towards
the reappropriation of Hegel, albeit problematic and not univocal.
    The heart of the “reappropriation of Hegel” carried out by Vattimo’s
hermeneutics is to be found in the theme of the end of art. The Ende der
Kunst is precisely the pivotal point where Vattimo’s position changes. Let us
see how this comes about. In Art’s Claim to Truth, Hegel is seen as largely
responsible for the rhetoric of the non–essentiality of art: a shortcoming
that, Vattimo objects, renders subsequent artistic forms — particularly the
avantgardes — incomprehensible. Hegel was responsible, in short, for a
veritable act of “violence” on art. But the attention that Vattimo paid to the
avantgardes, from Art’s Claim to Truth onwards, would also be the turning
point of his interpretation of Hegel. Upon closer investigation, in Vattimo,
the avantgardes eventually cease to be a phenomenon that disproves Hegel’s
thesis of the end of art or that simply renders the conceptual arsenal of
Hegelian aesthetics irrelevant; on the contrary, they become the reaction to
a complex historical scenario — a scenario that is no other than Hegel’s Ende
der Kunst — and thus do not invalidate that analysis, but instead reinforce it.
    Let us have a closer look at this shift. On the one hand, Art’s Claim to Truth
considers the avantgardes and, in particular, the proliferation of manifestos
as a demonstration that “Hegelian and post–Hegelian philosophy have
not done justice to art” , forcing artists to take a complex path of self–
questioning and self–justification. On the other hand, however, already
in the Introduzione all’estetica di Hegel (Introduction to Hegel’s Aesthetics),
published immediately after the  volume, these phenomena are seen
as the demonstration of the insuperable need for art, in a sense that is
no longer anti–Hegelian, but that, on the contrary, strives for a positive
retrieval of Hegel’s legacy. Vattimo refers to the thesis according to which,
given the necessity for the absolute idea to manifest itself in the form of
sensuous appearance, (artistic) beauty is the place where this necessity is
fully inscribed. Furthermore — once again in line with Hegel’s Lectures on
Aesthetics — art is necessary because the absolute Spirit’s effort to realize

  . Gianni Vattimo, Art’s Claim to Truth (New York: Columbia University Press, ), .
  . Vattimo, Art’s Claim to Truth, .
  . Vattimo, Art’s Claim to Truth, .
       Alberto Martinengo


itself as full self–recognition in the other is required by its freedom. And
this “need” of the Spirit finds in art something that cannot be found in
philosophy: namely sensuous form, understood as the supreme form of
absolute Spirit. Freedom, in short, demands to manifest itself concretely —
and, at least on a first level, this concreteness cannot do without a sensuous
form.
    Thus, Vattimo overcomes at the same time both Pareyson’s interdiction
and the Italian interpretations of the Ende der Kunst. This overcoming, from
his point of view, is the premise for a new understanding of Hegel: an under-
standing in which the end of art becomes the core of a more complex frame-
work. This can be seen clearly in his essay “The Death or Decline of Art”
(), which is the fundamental step of Vattimo’s hermeneutics towards an
authentic reappropriation of Hegel. The means of this re–appropriation are
heavily reminiscent of Heidegger: the end of art, Vattimo writes, must be
considered an event like those that mark the “history of Being” — in other
words, it is an element that, along with many others, forms the horizon
within which the history of modernity unfolds.
    Whereas Pareyson speaks of a “blissful union” between Heidegger and
Schelling, Vattimo suggests a union between Heidegger and Hegel. In the
interplay between the survival and downfall of art, writes Vattimo, the work
of art “displays characteristics analogous to Heidegger’s notion of Being: it
arises only as that which at the same time withdraws from us” . However,
this proximity to Heidegger enables Vattimo to take a step further, a step
which is decisive in judging whether the union between Heidegger and
Hegel is also “blissful.” Vattimo’s insistence on the notion of downfall has,
in fact, an ambitious objective: to bring the matter entirely back to the Hei-
deggerian theme of Verwindung. What Heidegger affirms with regard to the
Verwindung of metaphysics — as opposed to the Überwindung, and above all
as radically irreducible to the Aufhebung — also applies to art. Heidegger’s
Verwindung, recalls Vattimo, must be understood as a process of distortion
of certain notions, towards a gradual distancing from metaphysics. In this
sense — again, through an explicit reference to the poetics of the avant-
gardes — Hegel’s end of art becomes synonymous with the «‘explosion’ of
aesthetics beyond the institutional limits which are traditionally assigned
to it,” which has to do with art’s capacity for profound self–transformation,
problematizing its very limits. “One of the criteria for evaluation of the work
of art,” writes Vattimo in relation to the avantgardes, “seems to be, first and
foremost, the ability of the work to call into question its own status” . In
short, the aspect that can least be reduced to the established canon, which

     . Gianni Vattimo, “The Death or Decline of Art,” in The End of Modernity, .
     . Gianni Vattimo, “The Death or Decline of Art,” .
                                                  Should We Renounce Hegel?   


modern art seeks to violate, becomes a power that “distorts” tradition —
hence indeed a distortion of the canon, not its eradication or “overcoming.”
And this distortion is often ironic, as in the case of pop art, or else expresses
a radical mixture of registers, as we find in Kitsch. In other terms, from the
avantgardes onwards, one witnesses a phenomenon of Verwindung der Kunst
which, to Vattimo, is the most authentic sense of Hegel’s Ende der Kunst. But
the fundamental question remains, namely, whether this “rediscovery” of
Hegel by Vattimo’s hermeneutics is a faithful re–appropriation or whether,
at the end of the day, greater fidelity should be found in the “renunciation”
of Hegel supported by Pareyson.
                                          English translation by S. De Sanctis
