Originally Published: 2007-02-11

For celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome that laid the foundations of the European Union, Professor Gianni Vattimo used the only method open to a philosopher: criticism.
Last Tuesday at the Madden Auditorium of the University of Toronto, some 200 people - some standing - attended the lecture given by the Italian philosopher, and former European MP, on The Roots of Europe and the Philosophical Myth of Unity, organized by Istituto Italiano di Cultura and by the Department of Italian Studies of the U of T.
Starting from an analysis of Plato, and touching upon Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Karl Popper, among others, Vattimo explained how the philosophical myth of unity, and therefore any attempt to bring individual lives to one model, has been rejected also as a reaction to positivism and to the mechanization of life. His conclusion was that this concept derived from the need governments feel to dominate and control the diversity of human life.
Nowadays, according to Vattimo, "it is precisely the attempt to unify the values of Western democracy that terrorism originates from, insofar as it disallows any opposition, thus turning into intolerance of the other, while a free society is based on cultural diversity." He did not spare criticism of the European Union, born after World War II "to try and keep the peace on the continent, as an appendix to NATO," but unable to be a real alternative to the hegemony currently threatening to swallow cultural diversity, i.e. the United States and consumerism; to say nothing of the Catholic Church, opposing euthanasia in the name of the supposed intangibility of life.
In summary, Gianni Vattimo had something for everybody; and jokingly said that many consider him "a pacifist anarchist."
Professor Vattimo, why do you people call you a pacifist anarchist?
"Usually I call myself an anarchist-communist, even if I know this is very unpopular. I think that after the fall of Stalinism we can rediscover the original ideal of Soviet-based communism. The Soviets were the neighbourhood councils, i.e. meetings where every citizen could play a direct role in political decision making. On the occasion of a book fair in Cuba, I will publish a new pamphlet, entitled Ecce comu, come si ridiventa comunisti ("Ecce Comu, how we can return to Communism"). I realize that this is hard to argue, but the point is that communism was ruined by Stalin, and of course by many other things afterwards, but I like the ideal of a society with ample citizen participation - which by the way was Lenin's definition of communism. I am well aware that right now referring to Lenin's vision makes little sense, and that's why I call myself an anarchist-communist; this means that I intend to launch many initiatives, inspire by the idea of the widest possible participation, without seizing power. In my opinion, the problem of democracy today is that politics has become a business for a small group of technicians, and citizens are therefore cut off."

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