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Moynahan, Gregory

Not to give up anything of what is human : the History of problems [Problemgeschichte] and the Phenomenology of history in Hans Blumenberg and Ernst Cassirer

2021 - Bibliopolis

P. 211-243

  • Hans Blumenberg (1920-1996) wove commentary of Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) through a number of his key philosophical texts, ranging from those on myth and science to a reading of the parallel of Cassirer's Davos debate with Heidegger to the reformation colloquy of Luther and Zwingli. Although Blumenberg frequently adopted positions critical of Cassirer, the style of Blumenberg's work was deeply indebted to his predecessor. The debt is apparent not only in the manner in which Blumenberg used broad intellectual histories as a vehicle for redefining philosophical and social problems, but also in the deeper foundations of Cassirer's philosophy. Here Blumenberg often adopted Cassirer's basic methodology and discoveries but transformed their valence, in the process often redefining philosophical themes within the tradition of rhetoric.
  • Thus Blumenberg's “theory of reoccupations” can be read as an adaptation of Cassirer's use of set theory as a model for epistemological change -- a topic that Cassirer argued was his most original philosophical contribution – yet one which shifts debates from the development of concepts to that of metaphors. Although a number of authors have noted that Blumenberg's work can be seen as squaring the circle of the diverging positions of Cassirer and Heidegger, his approach to these problems can be read as doing so from a common inheritance and critique of the earlier neo-Kantian work of Hermann Cohen. [Publisher's text]

Is part of

Cassirer studies : XIII/XIV, 2020/2021