Trial and Crisis: Blumenberg and Husserl on the Genesis and Meaning of Modern Science

Abstract

The first part of the chapter traces the vicissitudes of curiositas in the labyrinthine third part of Blumenberg’s The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, “The Trial of Theoretical Curiosity”. The gist of this synoptic reading is that modern self-assertion is far less antagonistic than one might think, a compromise based on renunciation and transformation rather than rejection and radical upheaval of the received traditions. The second part juxtaposes Legitimacy’s account of the genesis of early modern science with Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences. If Blumenberg reconstructs the case “for” theoretical curiosity, Husserl believes that the “theoretical attitude” has yet to fulfil its original purpose. For all the differences between the two works, Blumenberg was a lifelong critical reader and admirer of Husserl’s and thus Crisis provides an interesting foil for Blumenberg’s “Trial”.