The Experiment of Nihilism

In this paper I try to explane the meaning of Vattimo’s definition of hermeneutics as the philosophical theory of the interpretative character of every experience of truth. This definition implies that interpretation is not the creative act hovering over the nothingness of nonsense, but rather a transformative rearticulation of meaning (sense). The cited definition in fact presupposes that 1) there is truth, 2) one has experience of truth, 3)such experience is of an interpretative kind, and 4) hermeneutics is a theory not of truth but o the experienc of truth. The nihilistic character of this experience does not consist so much in some metaphysical thesis perhaps expressed in the claim that “truth does not exist,” but rather in the experience one has thereof, which is an experience of transformation in the Hegelian sense. Nihilistic is the way in which such an experience presents itself to “hermeneutic consciousness.” The explanation of this definition of hermeneutics takes as guidlines some central concepts of Vattimo’s thought: Event, Opening, Verwindung, Eternal Return of the Same.