Rigorism of Truth

Hans Blumenberg (1920–1996) was Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at the University of Münster and the author of books including Paradigms for a Metaphorology (also in Cornell's Signale series), The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, The Genesis of the Copernican World, and Work on Myth. Joe Paul Kroll is Editor at the Leibniz Institute of European History, Mainz, Germany. Ahlrich Meyer, a German political scientist and historian, is the author of many books in German.

Blumenberg's essay brilliantly demonstrates his thesis on the subjectivity of 'truth.'(Neue Zürcher Zeitung) This work is recommended to everyone interested in Blumenberg's thinking and work.(literaturkritik.de) The Reader is a kind of belated debutante ball for Hans Blumenberg inviting a new audience to view Blumenberg not only at his entrance to scholarly life in the 1940s but also to key moments in his ascent of the rarefied staircase of German intellectual history.... A large and bounteous book.(Critical Inquiry) Rigorism of Truth has been received as a critically important text revealing Blumenberg's political interests. It gives insight into certain more articulated political views that remained hidden during his lifetime.(Phenomenological Reviews) Rigorism of Truth is as philosophically complex as the book is biographically and politically convoluted.(Arendt Studies) The book is an impassioned reflection on the power and failure of the rigorous pursuit of truth by two prominent Jewish intellectuals of the 21st century, namely, Sigmund Freud and Hannah Arendt. Blumenberg's posthumously published views, originally taken from his Nachlass, opens up important questions: what can truth achieve for our understanding of human political reality? What is the role of myth in the world of human affairs?(Philosophy in Review)