What To Do After The 'Death of God'?: An Analysis of Resentment and Social/Political Exclusion

Abstract

This project proposes a critical perspective on the emancipatory project outlined by Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala through the lens of two main problems: (a) ressentiment and (b) social/political exclusion. In working within these two problems, I argue that one should have caution in considering Vattimo and Zabala’s project because their Eurocentric ideals create several problems for social/political emancipatory thought. In order to elucidate the limitations of Vattimo and Zabala’s ideas, I suggest a return to Vattimo’s main theoretical source, Friedrich Nietzsche, and a careful reconstruction of Vattimo and Zabala’s construction of the category of the “weak.” Thus, I claim that the failure of Vattimo and Zabala’s emancipatory project is directly linked to a misreading of Nietzsche’s philosophy and the essentializing of the category of the “weak,” which leads their project in a direction that creates a distortion of the social/political situation they wish to describe. This leads Vattimo and Zabala to endorse an emancipatory strategy that in fact promises to exacerbate the social/political problems they aim to address.