The Legitimacy of the Modern Age

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.

About the author

Hans Blumenberg, the creator of metaphorology, was one of the most important German philosophers of the latter 20th century.

Summary

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.

Product details

• Authors: Hans Blumenberg, Dom Alfred Graham
• Assisted by: Tom McCarthy (Editor), R. M. Wallace (Translation), Robert M. Wallace (Translation)
• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 21.10.1985
• EAN: 9780262521055
• ISBN: 978-0-262-52105-5
• No. of pages: 712
• Dimensions: 155 mm x 230 mm x 40 mm
• Series: Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought; Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Philosophy: general, reference works