- Title Pages
- Hans Blumenberg: An Introduction
-
1 The Linguistic Reality of Philosophy -
2 World Pictures and World Models -
3 “Secularization” -
4 The Concept of Reality and the Theory of the State -
5 Preliminary Remarks on the Concept of Reality -
6 Light as a Metaphor for Truth -
7 Introduction to Paradigms for a Metaphorology -
8 An Anthropological Approach to the Contemporary Significance of Rhetoric -
9 Observations Drawn from Metaphors -
10 Prospect for a Theory of Nonconceptuality -
11 Theory of Nonconceptuality -
12 The Relationship between Nature and Technology as a Philosophical Problem -
13 “Imitation of Nature” -
14 Phenomenological Aspects on Life-World and Technization -
15 Socrates and the objet ambigu -
16 The Essential Ambiguity of the Aesthetic Object -
17 Speech Situation and Immanent Poetics -
18 The Absolute Father -
19 The Mythos and Ethos of America in the Work of William Faulkner -
20 The Concept of Reality and the Possibility of the Novel -
21 Pensiveness -
22 Moments of Goethe -
23 Beyond the Edge of Reality -
24 Of Nonunderstanding -
25 Unknown Aesopica -
26 Advancing into Eternal Silence - Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
“Secularization”
“Secularization”
Critique of a Category of Historical Illegitimacy (1964)
- Chapter:
- (p.53) 3 “Secularization”
- Source:
- History, Metaphors, Fables
- Author(s):
Hans Blumenberg
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
This chapter evaluates Hans Blumenberg's interpretation of the modern age, which is thrown into sharper relief in a text that would become the basis for his most famous book, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. Presented in 1962 at the seventh German congress of philosophy, “'Secularization': Critique of a Category of Historical Illegitimacy” (1964) challenges the notion of modernity as the illegitimate appropriation of medieval theological patterns, concepts, and institutions. Against such a substantialist view of history, Blumenberg presents a functional model in which “positions” of past thought systems become vacant and are “reoccupied” with new but unrelated concepts. Eschatology, to give an example, is not secularized into the concept of progress. Instead, once it loses its status as an explanation for the course of history, this function is taken up by the entirely distinct concept of scientific progress.
Keywords: Hans Blumenberg, modern age, philosophy, secularization, modernity, medieval theological concepts, medieval theological institutions, thought systems, scientific progress, eschatology
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- Title Pages
- Hans Blumenberg: An Introduction
-
1 The Linguistic Reality of Philosophy -
2 World Pictures and World Models -
3 “Secularization” -
4 The Concept of Reality and the Theory of the State -
5 Preliminary Remarks on the Concept of Reality -
6 Light as a Metaphor for Truth -
7 Introduction to Paradigms for a Metaphorology -
8 An Anthropological Approach to the Contemporary Significance of Rhetoric -
9 Observations Drawn from Metaphors -
10 Prospect for a Theory of Nonconceptuality -
11 Theory of Nonconceptuality -
12 The Relationship between Nature and Technology as a Philosophical Problem -
13 “Imitation of Nature” -
14 Phenomenological Aspects on Life-World and Technization -
15 Socrates and the objet ambigu -
16 The Essential Ambiguity of the Aesthetic Object -
17 Speech Situation and Immanent Poetics -
18 The Absolute Father -
19 The Mythos and Ethos of America in the Work of William Faulkner -
20 The Concept of Reality and the Possibility of the Novel -
21 Pensiveness -
22 Moments of Goethe -
23 Beyond the Edge of Reality -
24 Of Nonunderstanding -
25 Unknown Aesopica -
26 Advancing into Eternal Silence - Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
