Blumenberg on bringing myth to an end (original) (raw)
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Journal for The Theory of Social Behaviour, 2020
Myth has a convoluted etymological history in terms of its origins, meanings, and functions. Throughout this essay I explore the signification, structure, and essence of myth in terms of its source, force, form, object, and teleology derived from archaic ontology. Here I offer a theoretic typology of myth by engaging the work of contemporary scholar, Robert A. Segal, who places fine distinctions on criteria of explanation versus interpretation when theorizing about myth historically derived from methodologies employed in analytic philosophy and the philosophy of science. Through my analysis of an explanandum and an explanans, I argue that both interpretation and explanation are acts of explication that signify the ontological significance, truth, and psychic reality of myth in both individuals and social collectives. I conclude that, in essence, myth is a form of inner sense.
International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2017
This paper explores the philosophies of myth of Walter Benjamin and Hans Blumenberg. It defends the thesis that both approaches to myth, despite their differences, bring the longer, more ambiguous, legacy of the history of the human species into relation with the more familiar history of logos (a history of thinking). They do this by maintaining a distinction between myth as it probably first emerged, namely as a way of controlling human anxieties and vulnerabilities that arose as a consequence of the pragmatic, material conditions of the pre-historical world, and myth as the vast array of orally transmitted traditions left to history. In the case of both thinkers, this dichotomy illuminates myth, not as one category of human expression, but as a representation of the deeper vulnerabilities experienced by human beings, and the concerted, collective (largely failed) attempts to overcome them. Philosophy’s task in the face of a longer, darker history of the species, is a vigilant negotiation with the human frailties that might see its work undone.
Scientific Explanation and Metaphorical Practice Blumenberg's Theory of Unconceptuarity
Preface The history of philosophy often has been described from the perspective of 'rationality'. As the most popular slogan 'From Mythos to Logos' represents, which is the typical view of enlightenment philosopher 1 , the realm of Mythos has been evaluated as an irrational dimension in the history of philosophy. With such a historical perspective, not only myth, but also technology, rhetoric, and metaphor, in opposition to teoria, does not have entered it. However, we can question as following; is it legitimate to conceive philosophy as just only a rational activity? Is there any irrational dimension in the philosophical activities? And, in the first place, whether is the distinction between rational and irrational appropriate to evaluate philosophy itself? Hans Blumenberg(1920-1996), who is an attractive, however esoteric philosopher in PostWar German thought, would give answers to these questions. It is suggestive to examine his research program "metapholology" because he touched on the problem of 'From Mythos to Logos' historical view and criticized the assumption that logos overcame mythos. Despite using the distinction between rational and irrational, he used the words "concept (Begriff)" and "unconcept (Unbegriff)", so then presented his historical view as following; Die Eigenart und Geschichte der philosophischen Aussage bedingen, daß >Terminologie< hier einen umfassenderen Sinn hat als in anderen Disziplinen......Die Philosophie, die es immer wieder mit dem Unbegriffenen und Vorbegriffenen aufzunehmen hat, stößt dabei auch auf die Artikulationsmittel des Unbegreifens und Vorbegreifens......Die Vorstellung, der philosophische Logos habe den vorphilosophischen Mythos >überwunden<, hat uns die Sicht auf den Umfang der philosophischen Terminologie verengt; neben dem Begriff im strengen Sinne, der durch Definition und erfüllte Anschauung aufgewogen wird, gibt es ein weites Feld mythischer Transformationen, den Umkreis metaphysischer Konjekturen, die sich in einer vielgestaltigen Metaphorik 1 Concerning the enlightenment story about myth, and its relationship to human sciences, see, Angus Nicholls, Myth and Human beings Sciences, Hans Blumenberg's Theory of Myth, Routledge, 2015, pp. 41-44.
Mythological Hermeneutics of Hans Blumenberg
According to Hans Blumenberg, myth is a complex and multi-faceted subject that cannot be easily defined within the constraints of any one discipline. Rather, it exists in the "intermediate realm" between disciplines and can only be understood through an interdisciplinary approach. Even so, Blumenberg argues that myth has not yet been fully explored or utilized in this way, and that only by doing so can we truly understand the concept and its many nuances. In other words, the definition of myth and its inherent ambiguity cannot be determined at the outset of an interdisciplinary investigation, but must be arrived at through the course of such an investigation. 1 Our lack of a clear and distinct concept of myth makes Blumenberg suspicious of those mythologies that claim to have such a concept and try to explain it solely based on the methodology of their discipline. These disciplines have provided their practitioners with the tools and language necessary to define and understand relevant phenomena, but Blumenberg questions their ability to adequately explain myth without a more comprehensive understanding of the concept. Blumenberg believes that if one were to remove myth from the domain of these disciplines, one would risk engaging in a discourse that is casual, unmethodical, and therefore incompetent. However, this language of incompetence, which is not 1 "Wirklichkeitsbegriff und Wirkungspotential des Mythos" in Hans Blumenberg and Anselm Haverkamp. .
Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Psychsomatik, 2019
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the structure of human thinking by means of the concept “myth”. The starting points are several prominent theories on this subject which are in agreement that myth is neither a simple opposition to logos nor that it allows for separating strictly purely irrational and purely rational thinking. However, these theories demonstrate very different ways of understanding myth, its relation to logos and its functions in the structure of human consciousness. Therefore my paper aims at developing a systematic conceptual frame for the “myth” and the so called mythical thinking by means of convergence of several methods and forms of inquiry about the complex relations between theories of meaning and theories of myth. Its innovative character consists in the systematic examining structures of mythical thinking with help of conceptual tools coming from the nowadays largely forgotten hermeneutic tradition of Georg Misch und Josef König, which until now has not been applied to this subject matter. I will examine to what extent this theory can be helpful for the understanding of myth and explanation of its role in thinking and life of modern humanity.