文摘
While discussions of the debate between Karl Lxf6;with and Hans Blumenberg over ‘secularisation’ focus primarily on the methodological utility of the concept, the difference between them was also one of the philosophical commitments and substantive claims about modernity. This difference is not always obvious. One way of bringing it out is to address the different contexts in which they produced their most famous statements about secularisation. But another, and one that will be pursued here, is to consider the critical dialogue that both thinkers engaged in with Nietzsche. Put briefly, while Lxf6;with thought that Nietzsche misunderstood the ancients, Blumenberg thought that he misunderstood the moderns. For Lxf6;with, Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal return is not Greek, but an aggressive countergospel that owes much to the Christian culture it seeks to oppose; for Blumenberg, Nietzsche assumes, wrongly, that the self-belittlement of man by theology has been succeeded by the self-belittlement of man by science. In addition, Blumenberg – unlike both Nietzsche and Lxf6;with – thinks that he can mount a robust defence of both modern science and progress.