Care Crosses the River

by

Write a Review

In this collection of short meditations on various topics, Hans Blumenberg eschews academic ponderousness and writes in a genre evocative of Montaigne's Essais, Walter Benjamin's Denkbilder, or Adorno's Minima 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.

Care Crosses the River Reviews | Toppsta

9780804735797

Share on

Videos

If you would like to provide a video review please sign up to our video panel.

Series

This is Book 1 in the Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics Series. See all Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics books here.

Sign up to our newsletter for...

Free Book Giveaways, Recommendations & more

Be the first to write a Review


No one has written a review for 'Care Crosses the River'

Why not be the first to share your opinion?

Ratings

  • (0 Reviews)
  • (0 Reviews)
  • (0 Reviews)
  • (0 Reviews)
  • (0 Reviews)