Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-gq7q9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-22T03:26:42.490Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Utopia Dispersed

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Gianni Vattimo*
Affiliation:
University of Turin

Abstract

If utopias in the western cultural tradition owe their model of ideal, final, unitary order to the objective basis of metaphysics, have they not, like metaphysics, undergone a dissolution in Heidegger's sense of Verwindung? Insofar as the very notion of unity, like that of an ultimate metaphysical foundation, now reveals its violence and will to domination and as we are interested instead in thinking utopia as a ‘project for emancipation’, the author suggests replacing the unity that was hitherto characteristic of utopia with a multiplicity that is defended as a value and not as a phase of ‘confusion’ to be overcome.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Mannheim, Karl (1991) Ideology and Utopia. An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Schils. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1954) Werke in drei Bänden, ed. Schlechta, Karl. Munich: Band III.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1967) Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, eds Colli, Georgio and Montari, Mazzino. Berlin and New York: Band VIII.Google Scholar
Popper, Karl (1962) The Open Society and Its Enemies, 2 vols. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul (first published 1945).Google Scholar