Umbuchung. Säkularisierung als Schuld und als Hypothek bei Hans Blumenberg

Abstract

This essay revisits the controversial concept of secularization in the debate between Hans Blumenberg and Karl Löwith, situating their apparent disagreement against the foil of the former’s largely implicit critique of Rudolf Bultmann and Friedrich Gogarten. Rather than conceiving the modern age as one indebted to and derived from its Christian legacy, Blumenberg inverts the logic of debt, inheritance, and origination at the core of contemporaneous attempts to delegitimize the modern age. In his account, it is not the Christian legacy that is to be credited with the advent of the modern age, while the latter is to be faulted for deviating from its origin; rather, the presumed inheritance is in fact an inadvertent burden and liability against which modernity had to assert itself. In this regard, Blumenberg’s position turns out to be much closer to Löwith’s than usually assumed, though significant differences still remain.