Hans Blumenberg’s anthropology of instrumental reason: culture, modernity, and self-preservation

Abstract

This thesis argues that a notion of biological self-preservation is central to the philosophical anthropology of Hans Blumenberg. It shows how Blumenberg adopts an understanding of the human being developed in early 20th century German Philosophical Anthropology, particularly in the naturalistic variant proposed by Arnold Gehlen. This theory of the human argues that the unique biological make-up of the human being should be the central consideration in the interpretation of human life and its production (culture). Against the backdrop of an archaic experience of the power of nature that he calls ‘the absolutism of reality’, Blumenberg adopts this ‘anthropobiological’ paradigm and uses it as..