 The rise of this orientation toward realism has garnered significant attention in its own right. Especially important for contemporary hermeneutics, however, is that this new orientation toward realism has been an impetus for new developments. At one extreme, the rise of realism has recently led Gianni Vattimo not only to defend his postmodern hermeneutics against realism, but, moreover to develop a polemical critique of the motivations, philosophical and otherwise, to pursue realism. In this, Vattimo maintains that the rise of realism is motivated, in part, by a conservative reactionism against the consequences of postmodernism. He writes, for example, that among other roots of realism is “the fundamental neurosis that follows the late-industrial society as the regressive reaction of defense against the postmodern Babel of languages and values” (Vattimo 2016, 77).