The Remains of Being: Hermeneutic Ontology After Metaphysics
By Santiago Zabala
Columbia University Press, 2009
Zabala (Potsdam Univ.), part of a younger generation of Italian philosophers, is receiving increased attention in English-speaking philosophy largely, it seems, because of his connection to Gianni Vattimo. Building on his earlier exposition of Ernst Tugendhat in The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy (2008), Zabala seems to want to reach a wide audience with this book–which might explain the strange mix of introductory-level explanations of philosophical terms that nevertheless assume quite a bit of facility with the Heideggerian tradition. Introductory-level readers will be awash in the latter; while those familiar with Heidegger won’t need the former. Analytic philosophers are unlikely to have much patience for this book. But why should one let analytic (so-called) “rigor” take all the fun out of “meditative thinking,” which seems to be Zabala’s project: to reenergize and resurrect the later Heidegger in the milieu of Badiou, to rehabilitate hermeneutics as “postmetaphysical thought.” The book’s spirit–and even its shape–invites meditative reading in the shadowy corners of a café. And there is a certain virtue to being carried along in this, to be willing to lose oneself in meditative thinking, at least on a first reading.