Gianni Vattimo: Weak Thought and Its Contemporary Legacy

October 20, 2026

‍A Panel Discussion Celebrating the Special Issue of Philosophy Today

Saturday, November 14, 2026 | 12:00 PM EST
Online via Zoom | Free and open to the public

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The Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts presents a special online panel discussion celebrating the publication of a new issue of Philosophy Today dedicated to the work and legacy of Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo.

One of the most influential European philosophers of the past half-century, Vattimo is best known for his development of pensiero debole, or “weak thought,” and for his contributions to hermeneutics, aesthetics, postmodern philosophy, religion, and political thought.

Co-edited by Simonetta Moro and Santiago Zabala, the special issue of Philosophy Today brings together scholars reflecting on the breadth of Vattimo’s thought and its continuing relevance to philosophy, art, and contemporary life.

For this special online conversation, Silvia Mazzini, Simonetta Moro, Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, and Santiago Zabala will discuss Vattimo’s philosophical legacy, the ideas animating the special issue, and the ways his thought continues to resonate today.

Panelists

Silvia Mazzini is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Art Theory at IDSVA. A philosopher and theatre author, she works at the intersection of aesthetics and political philosophy. She has published on the subject of Art and Politics in Pasolini, Bloch, and Vattimo, as well as on tragic and comic thought and community theatre. Currently, she is writing on the Philosophy of Poverty. Before joining IDSVA, Mazzini was research fellow at the Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry and worked as Assistant Professor at Humboldt University, where she also obtained her PhD, at the Berlin University of the Arts and at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). She is co-editor of Making Communism Hermeneutical: On Vattimo and Zabala (Springer, 2017).

Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and author of many books, including Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency (Columbia University Press, 2017). He has written for the Guardian, the New York Times, and Al-Jazeera. His latest book is Signs from the Future. A Philosophy of Warnings (Columbia University Press, 2025). You can also find him on Instagram at @beingatlarge.

He co-edited the special issue of Philosophy Today with Simonetta Moro.

Simonetta Moro is President of IDSVA and Professor of Art, Philosophy, and Visual Studies. Moro is a visual artist and scholar with a focus on painting, drawing, and mapping practices. Her work has been exhibited internationally; publications include Mapping Paradigms in Modern and Contemporary Art: Poetic Cartography (Routledge, 2021) and The Vattimo Dictionary (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). Moro holds a PhD in Fine Arts, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK; an MA in European Fine Arts, Winchester School of Art, UK; and a BFA in Painting from the Accademia di Belle Arti, Bologna, Italy. Born in Italy, she currently lives between New York City and northern Italy. She co-edited the special issue of Philosophy Today with Santiago Zabala.

Alex Taek-Gwang Lee is Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Kyung Hee University, South Korea, where he directs both the Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies and the Global Centre for Technology in Humanities. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE) at the University of Brighton. In 2021, he served as Programme Manager for the Venice Biennale of Architecture. His English-language monographs include Communism After Deleuze (2025), Made in Nowhere: Essays on the Asiatic Modes of Existence (2025), Colors of the Concepts (2025), and Weak Technologies (2026). He has also contributed numerous chapters to edited volumes, writes regularly for e-flux and other media platforms, and has published extensively in Korean, with more than twelve books to his name.