La svolta mentale del Novecento. Le ragioni dell’opportunità

This paper aims to examine the mental turn of postmodern thought starting from the comparison between the observations of radical hermeneutics - represented by Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo - and the ones of the resistance movement called New Realism. First, a similar analysis from the two opposing factions of philosophers about the postmodern condition is highlighted. According to them, it is to be interpreted more generally as a "post-Kantian condition" that expresses a peculiar philosophy of meaning. In such a situation - especially following the indications of radical hermeneutics - two possible mental states emerge, conventionally defined as one "metaphysical" and the other "non-metaphysical", depending on the greater or lesser propensity to consider the object as dependent on the subject. The results that emerged lead to calling into question the historical analogies between hermeneutic thought and Karl Popper's falsificationism. Through the comparative examination between Popper's positions and the critical insights of other authors, it results that the same mental attitude is present both in postmodern hermeneutics and Popperian theory. This attitude is managed by a critical rationality for which it makes more and more sense to discuss achievable opportunities rather than a "reality" that has always been elusive. By leading every discussion and every research to the shareable opportunities, therefore, a different mental approach emerges, that is a critical opportunism that claims for itself the status of rational conduct of thought, thus denouncing the inconsistency of the prejudice that expresses the failure of reason in postmodern thought. IMPORTANT NOTICE – This document has been compiled and integrated with others into a streamlined volume uploaded to PhilPapers in May 2026. This latest open-access publication, in Italian, offers a comprehensive and updated overview of the theses on "critical opportunism." The title of the work is "La filosofia che conviene. L'opportunismo critico come strategia d'esistenza," which was a finalist in the 20th edition of the "PREMIO INTERNAZIONALE DI FILOSOFIA CERTALDO 2026" in the unpublished essays section.