Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith: A Dialogue »

Gianni Vattimo is emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Turin and a member of the European Parliament. His books with Columbia University Press are Not Being God, The Future of Religion (with Richard Rorty), Dialogue with Nietzsche, and Nihilism and Emancipation. His forthcoming book, coauthored with Santiago Zabala, is Hermeneutic Communism.

René Girard held the position of Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French Language, Literature, and Civilization at Stanford University until his retirement in 1995. He is the cofounder of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion, which meets annually to discuss issues in mimetic theory, scapegoating, violence, and religion, and his books include Violence and the Sacred, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, and A Theatre of Envy. In 2005, Girard was elected to L'Académie française, the highest tribute for a French intellectual.

Pierpaolo Antonello is senior university lecturer in Italian at St. John's College, Cambridge University.

William McCuaig is most recently the translator of Vattimo's Not Being God.

The debate over the place of religion in secular, democratic societies dominates philosophical and intellectual discourse. These arguments often polarize around simplistic reductions, making efforts at reconciliation impossible. Yet more rational stances do exist, positions that broker a peace between relativism and religion in people's public, private, and ethical lives.

Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith advances just such a dialogue, featuring the collaboration of two major philosophers known for their progressive approach to this issue. Seeking unity over difference, Gianni Vattimo and René Girard turn to Max Weber, Eric Auerbach, and Marcel Gauchet, among others, in their exploration of truth and liberty, relativism and faith, and the tensions of a world filled with new forms of religiously inspired violence.

Vattimo and Girard ultimately conclude that secularism and the involvement (or lack thereof) of religion in governance are, in essence, produced by Christianity. In other words, Christianity is "the religion of the exit from religion," and democracy, civil rights, the free market, and individual freedoms are all facilitated by Christian culture. Through an exchange that is both intimate and enlightening, Vattimo and Girard share their unparalleled insight into the relationships among religion, modernity, and the role of Christianity, especially as it exists in our multicultural world.

Library Journal

Vattimo and Girard are perhaps not household names in the United States but are well-known philosophers in Europe: Vattimo, a Catholic nihilist and a clever deployer of the ideas of Martin Heidegger; Girard, admired author of such books as Violence and the Sacred. Both men, from varying viewpoints, see Christianity as a crucial influence on world culture. This short volume is a compilation of conversations between the two held between 1996 and 2006, as well as essays written by each between 1999 and the present. Bracing and even daunting in its intellectual adventurousness, the book shows two very different minds with Christianity as "the religion of exit from religion" and one of the most important sources of democracy, individualism, and the free market—some of the very forces that have weakened its grip on contemporary society. VERDICT Rich, difficult, fascinating, and provocative reading on Christianity and culture from two of the new Europe's leading eggheads.

Note on the Text Introduction, by Pierpaolo Antonello
1. Christianity and Modernity, by Gianni Vattimo and René Girard
2. Faith and Relativism, by Gianni Vattimo and René Girard
3. Hermeneutics, Authority, Tradition, by Gianni Vattimo and René Girard
4. Heidegger and Girard: Kénosis and the End of Metaphysics, by Gianni Vattimo
5. Not Just Interpretations, There Are Facts, Too, by René Girard Notes Bibliography