Gianni Vattimo - CANCELLED!

We regret to inform you that due to unforeseen circumstances, Professor Vattimo had to cancel his visit to London on 8 December, when he was due to speak as part of the inaugural week of "Europe House".

We aim to reschedule with Professor Vattimo in the New Year. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

At lunchtime on 8 December, distinguished Italian philosopher and Member of the European Parliament Gianni Vattimo was going to take part in an event jointly organized by the UCL European Institute with the UK Office of the European Parliament and the European Commission Representation to the UK. This formed part of a fortnight of events to inaugurate the new London offices of the Commission and Parliament representations in "Europe House", the former Tory headquarters in 32 Smith Square.

The event was to take the form of an on-stage conversation between Gianni Vattimo and Richard Bellamy, Director of the European Institute. The conversation would have centred on how far - if at all - Professor Vattimo's philosophy has influenced his conduct as a politician. Does he still hold that the philosophical vocation is grounded in questions of the political good? Have his hopes for the emancipatory, educational and critical potential of philosophical thought been able to live up to the reality of doing politics in Europe?

About the speaker:

Gianni Vattimo is a prominent philosopher, public intellectual, newspaper columnist and social democratic politician. He studied philosophy under the existentialist Luigi Pareyson at the University of Turin, and later worked with Karl Löwith and Hans-Georg Gadamer in Heidelberg. A Professor of Aesthetics and Theoretical Philosophy at Turin since 1969, he has been visiting professor at Yale, Los Angeles, New York and the State University of New York. Among his publications are The Responsibility of the Philosopher (Columbia, 2010), Nihilism and Emancipation: Ethics, Politics, and Law (Columbia, 2004), Beyond Interpretation: The Meaning of Hermeneutics for Philosophy (Stanford, 1997), and, with Jacques Derrida, the edited volume Religion (Stanford, 1998).

Vattimo first was a member of the European Parliament between 1999 and 2004. He returned as an MEP in 2009 with the list Italia dei Valori - Lista Di Pietro, part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.