Abstract

This dissertation concerns the early intellectual career of the German philosopher and historian Hans Blumenberg , focusing on the genesis and critical reception of Legitimacy of the Modern Age , the work Blumenberg is best known for in the English-speaking world. The thesis traces the development of Blumenberg's ideas in the context of postwar intellectual discussions about the "crisis of modernity." ;Blumenberg's view of modernity derived largely from his early engagement with Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, who saw modernity as a problem of the history and fate of modern science and philosophy. Blumenberg developed his own narrative of the birth of the modern "theoretical attitude," which he believed arose as the "self-assertion of reason" against a theological absolutism, which denied human beings any certainty or knowledge about the world. With his notion of self-assertion, he contributed to contemporary debates on the causes and fate of modern technology, the secularization of European culture, and the existential condition of "modern man." In the process, he engaged with some of the major intellectual movements of his day, particularly philosophical anthropology, hermeneutics, and dialectical theology. As Blumenberg refined his historical narrative, he also sharpened his methodological approach. Participating in the postwar revival of hermeneutics, he forged his own "metaphorological" method for understanding historical change in terms of shifts in metaphors that answered fundamental questions, such as what is the world?, or what is truth? Blumenberg also proposed a theory of epochal shifts based on the "reoccupation" of the fundamental questions of a declining era with the answers of a new age. ;Legitimacy brought together his methodological and historical defense of modernity. The work was at once a historical narrative of the rise of modern theory and a commentary on the theoretical pretensions of Blumenberg's contemporaries. To those who demanded humanity's surrender to God, fate, tradition, or, in the parlance of existentialism, the "situation," Blumenberg pointed to the necessity of self-assertion. Yet to those who retained faith in the transcendent power of human reason, he warned against placing hope in its ability to answer all human needs.