Abstract

Here is presented a rereading of Hans Blumenberg’s criticism to the “theorem of secularization” in Die Legitimität der Neuzeit. This rereading aims to identify Blumenberg’s several interlocutors, showing that each of them raises questions that can’t be subsumed under the concept of the “theorem of secularization”. However, the terminological distinction between Umsetzung and Umbesetzung has an incontestable heuristic fruitfulness that allows to free the debate about secularization from certain theological schemes.