In this engaging book, Gianni Vattimo explores the theme of faith and religion which underlies much of his work. Written in a personal, conversational style, Vattimo examines such concepts as charity, truth, dogmatism, morality and sin through the lens of his own life and his own return to Christianity. While deeply critical of institutionalized religion and the Church, Vattimo discovers in the Christian tradition a voice (not a distinct message) whose interpretation is still being played out around us.

At the centre of the book is the enigma of belief. Freed by modernity from its Platonic subordination to knowledge, belief is recovered as a crucial and inevitable feature of our cultural and personal lives. 'Do you believe?' Vattimo is asked. 'I believe so', he replies.

Through an analysis of his own responses to the work of Nietzsche and Heidegger, Vattimo explores the relationship between nihilism and his own life as a devout Catholic, leading him to conclude that secularization stems from a Christian impulse, and that nihilism too could only have emerged from a Christian culture.

This original contribution to the contemporary debate on religion will be of great interest to scholars and students of theology, religious studies and philosophy.

This book by one of Europe's foremost contemporary philosophers is a concise and lucidly argued account of the meaning of hermeneutics for philosophy today.

Vattimo argues that hermeneutics, understood in a general sense, has had a pervasive influence on contemporary philosophy and social thought. But its very generality is also a symptom of its malaise, for it threatens to leave hermeneutics empty of significance and wedded to a shallow relativism.

In response to this danger, Vattimo proposes a radicalization of the relation of hermeneutics to its own historical roots in modernity and a rethinking of the relation between hermeneutics and nihilism - which involves, in Vattimo's account, a weakening of the strong structures of being, reality, subjectivity and above all, truth.

Vattimo develops a new interpretation of hermeneutics that dispenses with the traditional bias toward aesthetic experience. His radical interpretation breaks the link between hermeneutics and metaphysical humanism, challenges the traditional opposition of the natural and human sciences, and opens new perspectives on ethics, art and religion.

"Beyond Interpretation "will be welcomed by students and researchers in philosophy and social theory.

Now available in paperback, this book provides an elegant analysis of the philosophical background to the post-modernity debate. Vattimo focuses on the work of Nietzsche and Heidegger and shows how their bitter criticisms of modern European thought prepared the way for more recent proclamations of the end of the modern era.

Vattimo pursues questions central to aesthetics and hermeneutic philosophy and sides with contemporary philosophers such as Gadamer and Rorty in rejecting the search for stable and transcendent foundations for knowledge. Going beyond their work he introduces the notions of 'weak thought' and 'weak ontology' which, he argues, offer a way of 'going beyond' metaphysics by curing philosophy of the modernist disease and by resituating questions of truth and being within the realm of human experience.

In "The Transparent Society" Vattimo develops his own distinctive views on postmodernism and its philosophical and cultural relevance.

Vattimo argues that the post-modern condition is linked to the development of the mass media and the diffusion of systems of communication. However, he disputes the belief that this development will produce a more enlightened, self-conscious and 'transparent' society, maintaining instead that it leads to a diversity of viewpoints which render societies more complex, even chaotic.

Vattimo suggests that aesthetics provides vital insight into the post-modern condition, and argues that the function of art is not to reinforce eternal truths concerning the human condition, but to provide an experience of dislocation and of 'shock'. The multiplication of perspectives on the world disorientates us and removes the certainties we gain from our local culture. Instead, Vattimo argues, we learn the art of living in a world characterized by ambiguity and flux.