Care Crosses the River

by Blumenberg, Hans; Fleming, Paul

• ISBN13: 9780804735797
• ISBN10: 0804735794
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-08-16
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr

Summary

In this collection of short meditations on various topics, Hans Blumenberg eschews academic ponderousness and writes in a genre evocative of Montaigne'sEssais, Walter Benjamin'sDenkbilder, or Adorno'sMinima Moralia. Drawing upon an intellectual tradition that ranges from Aesop to Wittgenstein and from medieval theology to astrophysics, he works as a detective of ideas scouring the periphery of intellectual and philosophical history for clues--metaphors, gestures, anecdotes--essential to grasping human finitude. Images of shipwrecks, attempts at ordering the world, and questions of foundations are traced through the work of Goethe, Schopenhauer, Simmel, Husserl, Thomas Mann, and others. The book's reflections culminate in a rereading of the fable "Care Crosses the River" that lies at the center of Heidegger's analysis of Dasein in which the fable's elided Gnostic center is recovered: Care creates the human in its own image, as a reflection of its narcissism. At stake throughout are two inextricable elements of Blumenberg's thought: a theory of nonconceptuality as essential to philosophizing and an exploration of culture understood as humanity's unceasing attempts to relieve itself of the weight of the absolutism of reality.

Author Biography

Hans Blumenberg (1920–1996) was one of Germany's most important postwar philosophers. Among his works available in English are: The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (1985), Work on Myth (1986), The Genesis of the Copernican World (1989), and Shipwreck with Spectator (1996).

Table of Contents

Maritime Emergencies
Cursing the Sea	p. 3
Suffering Shipwreck Professionally	p. 3
Enemies	p. 4
Remaining Inconspicuous	p. 5
A Heretic on Board, on the Adriatic and the Danube	p. 6
The Heightened Casuistry of the Maritime Emergency	p. 9
Shipwrecked and Unable to Swim	p. 12
The Promise of Rescue Taken at Its Word	p. 13
Renouncing Rescue Right on Time	p. 15
Hungry for Figs Again	p. 16
The Deadly Calm of the Sea	p. 24
What is Perhaps Lost
Rescue by Sinking	p. 31
Darwin's Ship Bible	p. 32
Gestures of a Loss of Reality	p. 33
The Suspicion of Meaninglessness	p. 39
The Restlessness of the Spirits	p. 43
A Loss of the Last Judgment	p. 44
Aversion to Knowledge	p. 49
Side Effects of the Need for Meaning	p. 53
Remnants of the Unattainable	p. 56
The Last of All Cult Victims: Boredom	p. 60
Names Prescribe Burdens and Losses	p. 61
Rescues Without Sinking	p. 64
Fundamental Differences
Foundation and Soil, Bottom and Ground: Hitting Bottom, Getting to the Bottom of Things, Standing on the Ground	p. 67
Standing and Constancy	p. 70
The Building Site	p. 71
Farmland	p. 74
The Swamp	p. 75
"Asphalt" and "Swamp"-A Dualism	p. 78
Beneath the Foundations	p. 80
Terra Inviolata	p. 82
On Board c Transformations of a Metaphor	p. 85
Something Like a World Order
The Secrecy of All-too-easy Formulas	p. 93
Missing Timeliness	p. 94
A Talent for Guilt	p. 94
Visibility	p. 95
Detours	p. 95
King Pyrrhus c Life as a Detour	p. 97
Systematics of Fate	p. 98
A Case of Melancholy	p. 100
Border Post and Gravestone c A Daemon's World Orders	p. 101
Three Degrees Above Nothingness c On the Symbolism of Theoretical Insults and Consolations	p. 106
The Arbitration of the World	p. 109
A Proviso for the Beatified c Lead-Up to an Auxiliary Thought of Malte Laurids Brigge	p. 110
Unexpected Congruence	p. 113
Missed Encounters
Parable of the Unmissable Missed Encounters	p. 117
In Many Places	p. 118
On Rhodes	p. 118
In Rome	p. 119
In Rome, Somewhat Later	p. 121
In Vienna	p. 122
In Frankfurt	p. 123
In an Alpine Pasture	p. 124
In Jena	p. 126
In the East	p. 127
Summit Talks	p. 128
Hebbel at Schopenhauer's	p. 128
Proust and Joyce	p. 133
Dasein's Care
The Narcissism of Care: The Creature of a Fleeting Reflection	p. 139
The Fundamental Concern of Being	p. 141
Concern for a Final Unmistakability	p. 143
Concern for the Worthiness of Being	p. 145
Concern for Reason	p. 148
Taking Care of Happiness	p. 149
If Care Is Objective, Happiness Must Be Subjective	p. 152
Tense World Relations	p. 153
A Still Unconfirmed Last Word	p. 157
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