Myth and the Human Sciences (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | knygos.lt

Aprašymas

This is the first book-length critical analysis in any language of Hans BlumenbergOCOs theory of myth. Blumenberg can be regarded as the most important German theorist of myth of the second half of the twentieth century, and hisOCCWork on Myth"OCC"(1979) has resonated across disciplines ranging from literary theory, via philosophy, religious studies and anthropology, to the history and philosophy of science.

Nicholls introduces Anglophone readers to BlumenbergOCOs biography and to his philosophical contexts. He elucidates BlumenbergOCOs theory of myth by relating it to three important developments in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German philosophy (hermeneutics, phenomenology and philosophical anthropology), while also comparing BlumenbergOCOs ideas with those of other prominent theorists of myth such as Vico, Hume, Schelling, Max Mller, Frazer, Sorel, Freud, Cassirer, Heidegger, Horkheimer and Adorno. According to Nicholls, BlumenbergOCOs theory of myth can only be understood in relation to the OCyhuman sciences, OCO since it emerges from a speculative hypothesis concerning the emergence of the earliest human beings. For Blumenberg, myth was originally a cultural adaptation that constituted the human attempt to deal with anxieties concerning the threatening forces of nature by anthropomorphizing those forces into mythic images.

In the final two chapters, BlumenbergOCOs theory of myth is placed within the post-war political context of West Germany. Through a consideration of BlumenbergOCOs exchanges with Carl Schmitt, as well as by analysing unpublished correspondence and parts of the originalOCC"Work of Myth"OCCmanuscript that Blumenberg held back from publication, Nicholls shows that BlumenbergOCOs theory of myth also amounted to a reckoning with the legacy of National Socialism."