Mimetic theory and hermeneutic communism

In the last fifteen years, René Girard has engaged in a dialogue with the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo. Vattimo is famous for a philosophical approach named pensiero debole (weak thought). "Weak thought" is basically concerned with arguing for philosophical anti-foundationalism: drawing on the philosophy of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Gadamer, Vattimo advocates the rejection of metaphysics and a reinterpretation of truth as the opening of horizons. Vattimo has explained that he came to recognize a "completion" of Heidegger in Girard by reading "the weakening of Being as its sole form of manifesting itself beyond metaphysical oblivion" as "an analogon of the dissolution of the violence of the sacred."1 On this common ground, they have reached similar (although not identical) conclusions about Christianity and secularism, agreeing on the thesis that the process of secularization is a long-term and ongoing effect of the Gospels.