Panel: NARRATIVES BEYOND METAPHYSICS: POSSIBILITIES OF ORDER IN HERMENEUTICAL THEOLOGY



452.4 - MYTHICAL NARRATIVE AND POST-METAPHYSICAL ORDER: PAREYSON AND VATTIMO AFTER DISENCHANTMENT

AUTHORS:
Bubbio P.D. (University of Turin ~ Turin ~ Italy)
Text:
This paper investigates the notion of mythical narrative as structuring theological rationality within a post-metaphysical horizon. Through a philosophical reconstruction of Luigi Pareyson and Gianni Vattimo, it argues that disenchantment does not eliminate myth but transforms its status: myth persists as a narrative configuration through which truth, meaning, and normativity are articulated without recourse to comprehensive metaphysical systems. In Pareyson, myth functions as a tautegorical narrative in which truth is not illustrated but rendered present within historically situated interpretation. Mythical narrative becomes the medium through which transcendence is made intelligible without objectification. Yet his appeal to a unitary and revelatory truth raises the question of how such mediation can remain exposed to historical plurality without reintroducing a meta-historical criterion. Vattimo radicalizes this trajectory by interpreting disenchantment as the weakening of foundations and the demythologization of demythologization itself. Myth survives as historically mediated narrative orientation within an ongoing conflict of interpretations. Theological meaning emerges not from first principles but from interpretive practices shaped by non-foundational norms such as charity and recognition. This shift, however, intensifies the problem of order: how can narrative plurality sustain normativity without collapsing into arbitrariness? The paper proposes that mythical narrative be understood as a condition of shared orientation within a space of recognition. Mythical narratives order the philosophico-theological discourse by constituting the horizon within which truth claims become reciprocally binding amid interpretive conflict. Re-enchantment thus names the post-metaphysical persistence of narrative forms capable of sustaining theological intelligibility and critical normativity beyond system.