Focus: Blumenberg Renaissance

Although also open to other proposals and suggestions, the Focus is designed to address in particular the following lines of research:

  1. the contribution that recent critical investigations have made regarding Blumenberg's production and intellectual figure;
  2. the young Blumenberg, with particular reference to the relationship between theology and phenomenology;
  3. what new ways of reading Blumenberg's "classical" production are possible in the light of the newly published materials;
  4. the relationship between aesthetics, science, mythology and literature as it emerges in the texts and contributions published in the last decade in Germany.

Deadline: March 31th 2027
Expected release: May/June 2027

Advisory Editors:
Andrea Borsari, University of Bologna, Italy (a.borsari@unibo.it)
Fabrizio Desideri, University of Florence, Italy (fabrizio.desideri@unifi.it)
Francesco Valagussa, University of San Raffaele (Valagussa.francesco@hsr.it)

The theme of this special Focus of Aisthesis is motivated by the publication of more than twenty volumes, as well as significant correspondence (with Jacob Taubes, Carl Schmitt and Hans Jonas). These editorial facts have certainly made it more difficult to draw a reliable map of his vast production. The task can be facilitated by identifying some central nuclei of Blumenberg's vast production: the investigation of the critical threshold between the Middle Ages and Modernity and the Copernican revolution, with the included debate on secularization; the connection between myth and metaphor understood as an anthropological problem; the inevitability of the aesthetic-literary dimension as a form of knowledge; the continuous return to the phenomenological and theological presuppositions of the historical understanding of the world of life.
Complicating this broad and multifaceted panorama have been two main reasons in the last decade. On the one hand, the recent publication of significant texts. We are talking about autograph texts, such as Blumenberg's thesis on scholastic ontology, written in 1947 but published in 2020, and relevant collections: from Quellen, Ströme, Eisberge (2012) and Präfiguration. Arbeit am politischen Mythos (2014); up to the literary writings of the period 1945-1958 (2017), the phenomenological writings of the period 1981-1988 (2018), Realität und Realismus (2020), Die ontologische Distanz. Eine Untersuchung zur Krisis der Philosophischen Grundlagen der Neuzeit (2022). On the other hand, the fact that academic work and critical investigation have intensified in recent years, with the publication, especially in Germany, of numerous collective books and important monographs on philosophical thought and Blumenberg's biography.
In conclusion, it seems that the time has come to devote Blumenberg's thought the philosophical attention it deserves. "Aisthesis", therefore, aims to collect 4 to 6 contributions from qualified scholars in a Focus on this question.