Uwagi o Prawowitości epoki nowożytnej, jej autorze i jego filozofii

• Authors: Klemczak Stefan

Title variants

EN

REMARKS ON THE LEGITIMACY OF THE MODERN AGE, ITS AUTHOR, AND HIS PHILOSOPHY

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

These remarks are chiefly an attempt to introduce the issues and the construction of Hans Blumenberg’s seven-hundred-page philosophical treatise titled The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. It was first published in 1966 by Suhrkamp Publishers. The present article begins with the question of “generalities,” evoking the concepts, language, and interpretive formulae applied in approaches to history. Blumenberg’s point of departure is that the language of history is loaded with premises borrowed from metaphysics, as expressed by the metaphorical concept of “secularization.” This problem involves the categorical premises of metaphors, which here project a legal concept onto the interpretation of the modern age, introducing the notion of the illegitimate appropriation of goods. In order to deny the modern age’s legitimacy by suggesting that it merely transforms by “secularizing” the theological foundations of ideas established already in the Middle Ages, Blumenberg needs to go back to ancient and medieval sources. He finds that during those eras, too, there were epochal transformations in how the world was interpreted. “Secularization” is a pretext to, on the one hand, critique the categories and theories that apply evaluative labels in understanding historical epochs, and, on the other, to put forward a new framework for interpreting the modern age. This framework is based on the premise of differences between epochs, and an analysis of the mechanism for overcoming epochal thresholds, in part through such anthropological impulses as theoretical curiosity. Furthermore, when existing explanations cease to suffice during a given epoch, such as those pertaining to the concept of nature, the position of the Earth, or the number of land masses, everyday necessity forces people to seek alternate ways of explaining reality. In Legitimacy Blumenberg suggests a new interpretive framework for the history of European thought, aided by several different methods, such as the concept of the epochal threshold, theory of reception, and metaphorology, a theory derived from the history of philosophical concepts, which acknowledges the function of metaphors used in philosophical language. After describing the content of Blumenberg’s early works, the methods he used, and the cognitive results, the article outlines selected paths in his later philosophy, as well as his general philosophical approach.

Keywords

EN

BLUMENBERG; PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY; MODERNITY; SECULARIZATION; EPOCHAL TRESHOLD; METAPHOR

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Umiejętności / Uniwersytet Jagielloński
• Journal: Kwartalnik Filozoficzny
• Year: 2017
• Volume: 45
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 99-133

Contributors

author

Klemczak Stefan

• Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Instytut Religioznawstwa, ul. Grodzka 52, 31 - 044 Kraków, Poland