On the Way to the “Geistesgeschichte der Technik”

A Fragment of a Project by Hans Blumenberg

Abstract

The central purpose of this study is to contextualize Hans Blumenberg's early essay The Relationship between Nature and Technology as a Philosophical Problem (1951), not to reconstruct the complex views of the German philosopher concerning technology. The following translation of Blumenberg's essay is also of interest since it can be seen as a part of an unfinished project called “Geistesgeschichte der Technik”. The study deals with Blumenberg's rootedness in discussions around technology in Germany (philosophical anthropology, pessimistic cultural criticism). The article shows how the young philosopher reacted to the issues presented by Husserl, Heidegger, Gehlen and other authors. The philosophy of technology in Scheler's Problems of the Sociology of Knowledge (1926) presumably had a decisive influence on the formulation of the question concerning technology in Blumenberg, which is one of the main theses of my article. Namely, the broader significance of Scheler for discussing technology in Germany before and after World War II boils down to three points: (1) at the heart of the process of technization of the Modern Age lies a certain instinct of power (Machtantrieb); (2) only a break with the culture of the Middle Ages makes it possible to genetically explain the world in which science and technology, in their mutual influence, are a consequence, not a cause; (3) philosophy as metaphysics allows us to see and name the ethical “guilt” of the New European society. The second thesis of this article is that Hans Blumenberg is the author who ultimately did not create the “philosophy of technology”; Blumenberg's writings on this topic are found on the periphery of his texts on the genesis of the Modern Age, which at the same time does not detract from the significance of his present statement.