The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)

In this book, Hans Blumenberg disputes the view that the modern idea of progress represents a secularization of religious belief in some divine intervention (the coming of the Messiah, the end of the world) which consummates human history from outside. Drawing from sources ranging from Aristotle and Augustine to Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, and Kuhn - with an impressive number of stops between - he argues that progress always implies a process at work within history, a process that ultimately expresses human choices, human self-assertion, and man's responsibility for his own fate.Hans Blumenberg has been associated with Kiel University in Hamburg since 1947. The book is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. The Legitimacy of the Modern Age......Page 2 Contents......Page 4 Series Foreword......Page 8 Translator's Introduction......Page 10 Part I: Secularization: Critique of a Category of Historical Wrong......Page 32 Status of the Concept......Page 34 A Dimension of Hidden Meaning?......Page 44 Progress Exposed as Fate......Page 58 Instead of Secularization of Eschatology, Secularization, by Eschatology......Page 68 Making History So As to Exonerate God?......Page 84 The Secularization Thesis as an Anachronism in the Modern Age......Page 94 The Supposed Migration of the Attribute of Infinity......Page 108 Political Theology I and II......Page 120 Part II: Theological Absolutism and Human Self-Assertion......Page 154 Introduction......Page 156 World Loss and Demiurgic Self-Determination......Page 168 A Systematic Comparison of the Epochal Crisis of Antiquity to That of the Middle Ages......Page 176 The Impossibility of Escaping a Deceiving God......Page 212 Cosmogony as a Paradigm of Self-Constitution......Page 236 Part III: The 'Trial' of Theoretical Curiosity......Page 258 Introduction......Page 260 The Retraction of the Socratic Turning......Page 274 The Indifference of Epicurus's Gods......Page 294 Skepticism Contains a Residue of Trust in the Cosmos......Page 300 Preparations for a Conversion and Models for the Verdict of the 'Trial'......Page 310 Curiosity Is Enrolled in the Catalog of Vices......Page 340 Difficulties Regarding the 'Natural' Status of the Appetite for Knowledge in the Scholastic System......Page 356 Preludes to a Future Overstepping of Limits......Page 374 Interest in Invisible Things within the World......Page 392 Justifications of Curiosity as Preparation for the Enlightemnent......Page 408 Curiosity and the Claim to Happiness: Voltaire to Kant......Page 434 The Integration into Anthropology: Feuerbach and Freud......Page 468 Part IV: Aspects of the Epochal Threshold: The Cusan and the Nolan......Page 486 The Epochs of the Concept: of an Epoch......Page 488 The Cusan: The World as God's Self-Restriction......Page 514 The Nolan: The World as God's Self-Exhaustion......Page 580 Notes......Page 628 Name Index......Page 702 Annotation. In this major work, Blumenberg takes issue with Karl Lowith's well-known thesis that the idea of progress is a secularized version of Christian eschatology, which promises a dramatic intervention that will consummate the history of the world from outside. Instead, Blumenberg argues, the idea of progress always implies a process at work within history, operating through an internal logic that ultimately expresses human choices and is legitimized by human self-assertion, by man's responsibility for his own fate. Hans Blumenberg is professor of philosophy at the University of Munster. The Legitimacy of the Modern Age is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy In this major work, Blumenberg takes issue with Karl Löwith's well-known thesis that the idea of progress is a secularized version of Christian eschatology, which promises a dramatic intervention that will consummate the history of the world from outside. Instead, Blumenberg argues, the idea of progress always implies a process at work within history, operating through an internal logic that ultimately expresses human choices and is legitimized by human self-assertion, by man's responsibility for his own fate.