Progress, Secularization and Modernity: The Löwith-Blumenberg Debate

Author(s): Robert M. Wallace

Source: New German Critique, No. 22, Special Issue on Modernism (Winter, 1981), pp. 63-79
Published by: Duke University Press
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Progress, Secularization and Modernity.
The L'with-Blumenberg Debate

by Robert M. Wallace

I. Contempprary Attitudes toward Progress

"Progress" is no longer the watchword, the unquestionably beneficial

goal and process that it once was in the United States and the West. The
European intelligentsia shed its illusions about progress some time ago,
under the impact of the world wars, the "Final Solution," etc. In the
United States, innocence lasted longer, but with Vietnam and the environ-
mental crises, the existence of widespread doubt about the capacity of the
"progressive" trio of democracy, industry and science to resolve all prob-
lems has become a "normal" state of affairs here too. It is no longer only
ideologically "counter-cultural" types who doubt the possibility or even
the meaning of progress. Even the advocates of nuclear power, the
builders of the latest Macdonald's, and the investigators of recombinant
DNA, though they may still occasionally apply the word "progress" to
these projects, defend them not as being themselves beneficial but merely
as generating jobs, or ultimately as being "inevitable." For many of us
"progress" has thus become another name for the steamroller of history -
a steamroller which it now seems may only stop when it has obliterated its
"drivers" as well as everything else.
Indeed, we may wonder whether that wasn't the real nature of "pro-
gress" all along. The suggestion of the occasional socialits that these phe-
nomena are really symptoms of the irrationality of late capitalism and can
and must be overcome by the establishment of a more thorough-going
democracy, of an industry organized to meet real needs, and of a science
which aims to solve people's real problems - such naively "progressive"
suggestions are met with incredulity. The "socialist" countries now in exis-
tence seem more intent on progress as pollution than even our late-
capitalist ones, and they don't inspire confidence in the possibility of
progress in democracy either. But even more basically, we doubt our own
ability to distinguish real needs from false, "manipulated" ones, to define
really worthwhile goals and to make "real progress" towards them. Our
experience is so dominated and suffused by the mechanisms of official and,
we think, false progress that when we consider the possibility of an
alternative, that possibility almost inevitably presents itself not as a differ-

63

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64 Wallace

ent kind of progress, "real" progress this time, but rathe

as an escape from progress and all that it connotes. And o
plenty of "world-views" available to help those who wo
non-"progressive" mode of existence. Oriental religions
itation, fundamental or maybe existential Christianity
anarchism, neo-Platonic, neo-Aristotelian, neo-Scholasti
ian philosophy. . . everything and anything is capabl
revival or appropriation, or even (perish the thought)
In the shadow of (and, often, by means of) the offic
"inevitable" ongoing mechanisms of progress, the "alterna
However, these more or less escapist phenomena
threat to the salvageability of any conception of real prog
by attempts to explain the idea of progress itself
inauthentic version of something else. There have been a n
attempts along these lines, including the ecologically-in
trace the origin of dominating or exploiting nature in
Heidegger has suggested that the modern preoccupation
a phenomenon of the forgetfulness of Being which o
somewhere in Greek philosophy. One of the most inter
of these attempts, focussing on the concept of progress i
known in this country as the two just mentioned, pr
originated long before the ecology movement and has not
kind of popularization that Heidegger has received. Th
propounded pre-eminently by Karl Lowith, that t
progress is a transformation into worldly form of Ch
that is, of the Christian preoccupation with the future as
the "last things," the end of the world, the Last Jud
damnation, etc.

II. Karl L)whith's Theory of Progress as Secularized Eschatology

Lowith's book, Meaning in History, was published by the University of

Chicago Press in 1949 with the unfortunate subtitle, "The Theological
Implications of the Philosophy of History." The German edition, pub-
lished in 1953 after Lowith's return to Germany, carries the much more
accurate subtitle, "Die theologischen Voraussetzungen der Geschichts-
philosophie," that is, the theological presuppositions of the philosophy of
history. L6with's thesis is not about theology as such; rather, it is about the
derivation of modern philosophies of history, with their almost unbroken
celebration of progress, from Christianity (and, through it, from Judaism).
It is about the - mostly hidden - theological presuppositions of modern
historical consciousness, as exemplified by leading thinkers of the 18th and
19th centuries (Voltaire, Turgot, Condorcet, Comte, Proudhon, Hegel,
Marx).

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 The Lowith-Blumenberg Debate 65

Lowith finds the key to the derivation of these philosophies of history

from Christianity in Hegel, the one modern philosopher of history who
makes his relationship to Christianity a central and overt feature of his
system. This emerges in Hegel's doctrine that the modern spiritual and
political world (which he claimed to bring to full comprehension in his
philosophy) arose through a "suspension and carrying-forward" ("Auf-
hebung") of the Christian-Reformation phase of world history.' L6with, of
course, abandons Hegel's assumption that this process constituted a "step
forward," but he preserves Hegel's schematic outline in his own doctrine
that the modern idea of progress suspends (i.e., for L6with, disguises) and
carries forward (in secularized form) the Christian relationship to escha-
tology. The purpose of Lowith's book, he tells us, is to show that, contrary
to the consciousness of most exponents other than Hegel, the "philosophy
of history originates with the Hebrew and Christian faith in a fulfillment
and that it ends with the secularization of [that faith's] eschatological
pattern."z
Lowith's book does not undertake to present a comprehensive history
or analysis of the phenomenon of "progress." Most of the time, it stays on
the level of the history of ideas (i.e., in this case, mostly of philosophy and
theology), beginning with the most widely influential formulations of the
optimistic "faith in progress" that was so prevalent in the 19th century and
working backwards, looking always for earlier forms of the idea and for its
ultimate source as an idea. The central portion of the book is a discussion
of the theories of Marx, Hegel, Proudhon and Comte, the 19th-century
socialists, idealists and positivists who all (despite their often radical
disagreements with one another) in L6with's view share a conviction that
world history is unified and intelligible in terms of an underlying pattern of
unbroken and seemingly inevitable progress towards some form of ideal
ultimate human condition. L6with ridicules this attitude, not vociferously
but with the quiet effectiveness that is possible for a European whose youth
coincided with World War One, young manhood with the Weimar Repub-
lic, and mature years with the "Third Reich", World War Two, the "Final
Solution", and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He seeks continually the source
of this non-rational faith in a pattern that scientific objectivity, as well as an
honest awareness of daily human experience, should have exposed as an
illusion before time and intellectual energy could be wasted on it. And he
isn't bashful about stating his conclusion, time and again, as he finishes
with each author, that this peculiar idee fixe is comprehensible only as a
disguised version of the Hebrew and Christian focus on certain future
events, and on movement towards them, as crucial for man's happiness.

1. L6with discusses Hegel at greater length in his first major work, From Hegel to Nietzsche
- The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Thought (New York, 1964; German original published
in Zuirich in 1941).
2. Meaning in History (Chicago, 1949), p. 2.

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66 Wallace

One possible alternative explanation L6with does not

what might be called the "materialist" or sociological
according to which the illusions of these intellectuals
falutin' versions of the enthusiasm that was widesprea
sumably have become widespread even without their
the evident progress in the material productivity of s
industry, etc. in the 19th, 18th and even earlier cent
does not consider this type of explanation I can, of c
However, two possibilities do occur to me. The first
believe that intellectual phenomena (the history of id
plained primarily by reference to other intellectual ph
logical explanations contain an unacceptable "reduction
to the extreme would deny the possibility of though
suffocate even itself as a (self-conscious) theory. This
the materialist "unmasking" of theories as mere reflection
certainly has some plausibility. The second possibility i
the back of his mind that the secularization of Christian ideas and attitudes
is the fundamental explanation not only of the idea of progress but of the
very motivation and power of "progress" itself, as embodied in the general
dynamism (economic, military, scientific, etc.) of European capitalist
society since, say, the 16th century. He does offer some speculative
remarks, especially at the end of his book (pp. 202-203), that suggest this
kind of account. If this is indeed what he really thinks, then to explain the
idea of progress as a reflection of material developments would just lead
back to Christianity again as the cause of those material developments.
And much of the motivation for the materialist reduction would disappear
in view of such a circle.
But let us return to what Lowith does give us: his history of ideas.
Another recurring theme in Lowith's thinking, along with the thesis that
the modern idea of progress is the result of secularization of Hebrew and
Christian "futurism," is the contrast of this fixation on the future with what
Lowith takes to be the characteristic ancient (pre-Christian) attitude, one
which sees history as a succession of rises and falls, growth and decadence
etc., analogous to the natural cycles of living things and of the heavens, and
epitomized in the common Greek theory (elaborated as a historical cos-
mology in the doctrine of the Stoics) of a continual "recurrence," which is
essentially unchanged throughout past, present and future. It is clear that
L6with feels drawn to this ancient world-view more even than to the
indifference to worldly progress which characterizes what he regards as
true Christianity. While he may honor the latter, still its historical advent
and triumph were the end of antiquity and the source of at least one of our
most basic modern confusions.
How exactly did the transformation come about by means of which
Christianity gave rise to the modern idea of progress? L6with examines
several 18th century thinkers - Voltaire, Turgot, Condorcet - in whose
time the idea is commonly agreed to have emerged in its full modern

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 The Lowith-Blumenberg Debate 67

clarity. He also studies the enigmatic and isolated work of Giambattista

Vico, and the overtly Christian historico-theological writings of authors
such as Bossuet, Joachim of Floris, Saint Augustine, Orosius - and the
writers of the Bible itself. These discussions are very interesting, but no
clear pattern or sequence of transformation appears. L6with does not seem
to suggest, for instance, that Christian thinking became increasingly more
worldly during the Middle Ages, foreshadowing an eventual transforma-
tion into the (ostensibly) irreligious modern doctrines of progress. Nor
does he define a point of stress, weakness, or potential crisis in Christian
thinking which would help to explain the transformation. (Nor, again, does
he put forward any "materialist" or sociological type of explanation, such
as has been so tempting to others in explaining the waning of the Christian
Middle Ages, etc.) The secularization of eschatology is apparently such an
elusive, or such a deep-lying process that its stages, if it has stages, are not
manifest in the documents of the history of ideas. It is, perhaps, a
"theoretical construct," necessary to explain what is observable, but not
itself apparent in the data. A skeptic might wonder whether the "material-
ist" explanation of the rise of the idea of progress is not, despite its unsatis-
fying "vulgarity," just about as persuasive as this sort of highly speculative
theory.
But L6with shows no signs of uncertainty. Apparently he wasn't
looking so much for the confirmation as for an "illustration" of his theory of
secularization in the writers he examines. Seeing no alternative intellectual
account of the modern idea of progress - and there was none, prior to the
appearance of Hans Blumenberg's studies in the 1960s - Lowith is simply
confident that the account he has proposed must in some way be the
correct one.

What will be the consequences if we accept L6with's theory? I

basic implication is that modern thought has a fundamentally
sciousness of itself. While claiming to be an expression of auth
human rationality, modern thought relating to history in fact
fundamental pattern of interpretation - that of direction toward
goal or fulfillment - from theology, from the very dogmas
Enlightenment and its 19th-century "historicist" heirs were con
not to deny, at least to bracket off from their explanatory endea
this is not just an innocent "borrowing," as it were, of "termin
which can readily be separated from the original context from w
borrowed; in its original context this pattern of interpretation is so
intertwined with the concept of faith that the presence of the patte
modern context must cast fundamental doubt on that context's character-
istic modern claim to elementary human rationality - once the source of
the pattern is recognized. "The modern mind has not made up its mind
whether it should be Christian or pagan. It sees with one eye of faith and
one of reason. Hence its vision is necessarily dim in comparison with
either Greek or biblical thinking." (p. 207)
A grim conclusion, for those of us who would like to salvage something

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68 Wallace

from modern philosophy - and, for that matter, from

L6with does not try to pretty it up. From the wreck of mo
by the recognition of this false consciousness, he draw
moral. Nor (at least in Meaning in History) does he sugg
He praises the stoical refusal-of-illusions of figures like
and depicts the classical Greek concepts of nature, cosm
sively as a model of a world-consciousness untroubled by
progress, etc. But he does not claim to inhabit such a n
Perhaps it is an index of the exhaustion of our times tha
was not systematically criticized - though, at least in
widely known, cited and elaborated upon by theologians
-- until 1962, and no book was devoted to its refut
Whatever the reason for the delay, that critique and re
available, and form the subject of the remainder of thi

III. Blumenberg's Critique of the Secularization Theory

Hans Blumenberg is a younger German philosopher

before his debate with L6with as the author of "Parad
phorology," of a book on The Copernican Turn, and
specialized studies. At the Seventh German Philosophy C
Blumenberg read a paper containing both a thorough-goi
notion of "secularization" and the claims made on its behalf, and a
suggested alternative account of the origin of what he regarded as the
legitimate modern idea of progress, and of the origin of the grandiose
philosophies of history in which ideas of progress have played such a
central role. This paper was revised, expanded, and supplemented by a
dramatically original account of the origin of the modern age as a whole, in
a book Blumenberg published in 1966 under the title Die Legitimitiit der
Neuteit - The Legitimacy of the Modern Age.3
Part One of the book (like Blumenberg's original paper) is entitled
"Secularization: Critique of a Category of Historical Illegitimacy." In it
Blumenberg asks what exactly is meant by the assertion that a concept or
structure is "the secularization of" a Christian concept or structure.4 First
he points out how this kind of assertion differs from the more general kind

3. (Frankfurt am Main, 1966). An English translation (by the author of this essay) of the
second edition of this book will be published by MIT Press.
4. Blumenberg reminds us of many other alleged instances of this process, besides the one
which is supposed to have produced the idea of progress. Epistemology's central problem of
certainty is traced back to the Christian's problem of certainty of salvation; the modern work
ethic, to Christian sainthood and asceticism; political sovereignty to divine sovereignty;
communism to paradise or the apocalypse; the infinity of the universe to divine infinity; etc.
Blumenberg criticizes only some of these supposed secularizations individually.

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 The Lowith-Blumenberg Debate 69

of statement, that ours is a "secular age," or that it is always getting more

and more secular (i.e., less interested in or dominated by religion).
Whether true or not, such statements are clearly very different from (and
much less interesting than) statements to the effect that certain modern
phenomena are secularized versions of Christian ones. Turning to the
latter, Blumenberg suggests that Lowith's book and the subsequent liter-
ature imply a model of the process of secularization which he spells out in
terms of three criteria:
- First, that an identifiable common "substance" underwent the transfor-
mation from Christian to "secularized" form. (So that, for example,
merely analogous formation, without a continuous process of transforma-
tion connecting them, won't qualify.)
- Second, that the "substance" belonged properly to the earlier, Chris-
tian framework. And
- Third, that the transformation was a "one-sided" one performed not by
Christianity ("secularizing" itself, so to speak), but by an agent outside it.s
My discussion here will refer mainly to the first of these three criteria,
which is central to Blumenberg's critique of Lowith in particular. (Blumen-
berg's critique of "secularization theories" in general contains a good deal
that cannot be summarized here.)
Turning then to the criterion of the existence of a common "substance"
which undergoes the supposed process of secularization, Blumenberg
points out first of all that there is an evident formal difference between the
ideas associated with eschatology, and the idea of progress. The former all
involve some form of dramatic transcendent incursion (coming of the
Messiah, end of the world, Last Judgement) which consummates the
history of the world from outside. Whereas the idea of progress, however
spiritualized it may be in particular versions, always denotes a process at
work within ("immanent in") history, proceeding from stage to stage (even
to an ultimate "end") by an internal logic, not by external intervention.
Lowith had shown some consciousness of this problem at various points
in Meaning in History, especially in the Epilogue, where he took pains to
describe what eschatological and modern ideas had in common as simply
an orientation to the future as the crucial "horizon" for man, and hope (or
expectation) as man's attitude in relation to that horizon.6 This was clearly
meant to direct attention away from the differing modes of "consum-
mation" in the Christian and the secularized versions of the idea. Lowith

5. This model has been criticized on various grounds, against which Blumenberg defends
it in the second edition of his book (Volume One: Siakularisierung und Selbstbehauptung,
suhrkamp taschenbuch wissenschaft No. 79, Frankfurt 1974, pp. 23-31, 37). To the best of
my knowledge no alternative analysis of the concept of secularization, with comparable
clarity, has been suggested. L6with's response to Blumenberg's critiques does not undertake
to present an alternative analysis.
6. Meaning in History, pp. 84, 111, 196, 204.

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70 Wallace

again emphasized this minimum common substance in h

Blumenberg's critique.7
Blumenberg's second line of criticism questions the c
eschatological substance through the "secularization
questioning the identity of the end points of the process,
an entirely different derivation for the modern "result":
alogy of the idea of progess."8 Briefly, what he asserts
idea of progress arose in the course of two main early-m
the spring forward made by astronomy in the 16th and 17
the "quarrel of the ancients and the moderns" which ra
century. The astronomical progress registered by Cope
Kepler was possible only on the basis of comparisons o
centuries, an enterprise the success of which required
exceeding that of an individual life-time, and (b) a the
data-collection and transmission) that likewise would no
be accomplished by a single individual. In this resp
astronomy exhibited not only results, but also a stru
enterprise) which was entirely novel in Western experi
doubt its importance as a model for modern science do
Blumenberg suggests that as a model of methodical progre
and was in fact influential outside "science" as well.
But before the idea could be generalized in that manner, the mix was
enriched by the "quarrel of the ancients and the moderns." Here the
crucial result was that in the course of their debates over whether the
achievements of ancient art and literature could be equalled or surpassed
in modern times, the participants gradually overcame the Renaissance idea
that those achievements constituted permanently valid models of perfec-
tion, in favor of a conception of the arts as expressing the creative spirit of
their particular age. Unlike science, the arts did not require many indi-
viduals or generations for their success; but their success did inspire
reflection on the dignity and creative power of man, in all ages. And what
happened in the 18th century is that both conceptions - the new scientific
idea of integrating the efforts of many individuals in an overarching, "pro-
gressive" totality, and the new aesthetic idea that if anyone is in charge and
is productive here, it is not God, and not nature, but man - were finally
combined in the conception of progress in general as "man making history"
in all departments (science, art, technology, society . . . )- the "idea of
progress" that speaks through the writings of Voltaire, the Encyclopedists,
Kant et al.
What Blumenberg describes, then, is the gradual emergence of an idea

7. In Philosophische Rundschau, 15 (1968), esp. p. 198.

8. The astronomical part of this "genealogy" is traced in detail in what is so far Blumen-
berg's only text in English: "On a Genealogy of the Idea of Progress," Social Research, Spring
1974.

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 The Lowith-Blumenberg Debate 71

of "progress in general" from partial experiences in the specific areas

where early modern human endeavor had some of its most pregnant
experiences. Only at the end of two centuries does an "idea of progress"
emerge which is comparable in its generality to that of eschatology. But it
is still crucially different from eschatology in its form - its "immanent"
rather than "transcendent" consummation -- as Blumenberg pointed out
initially. And its "genealogy," at least on the surface, has nothing to do
with eschatology, and everything to do with what Blumenberg (in Part Two
of his book) calls "human self-assertion," the fundamental irreligious
effort of modern (post-Christian) man to make the most of what is
available to him in this life and this world."
And this assertedly legitimate (un-secularized, authentic) concept of
progress is different from eschatology in a further, crucial respect, despite
the level of generality it has now reached: unlike the ambitious "philoso-
phies of history" (Condorcet, Proudhon, Comte, Hegel, et al.) which come
later and which are the focus of Lowith's analysis, progress here is not yet
and not essentially conceived of as an account of the inherent "meaning of
history" as a whole. It is only as successful as human beings choose to make
it and succeed in making it - there is no way it can be found in all the
phenomena of recorded or unrecorded history, and it certainly does not
"justify" or "explain the meaning of" the misery of the greater part of
that history. It is still only a partial account of an aspect of human
experience - though of a crucial aspect, in effect, for many of us.

/IV. Lowith's Response

But allowing that such a relatively modest authentic idea of progress

may have existed, and played a modest role, in the 18th century - allow-
ing that it may still exist, among the remnants of our tradition that we carry
with us and that some of us tend with loving care - the reader may
wonder how it was that this idea was so rapidly (if not immediately)
transformed into the much more ambitious schemas of people like Condor-
cet, Saint-Simon, Proudhon, Comte, Hegel and (as he is often interpreted)
Marx, in all of which the reader is led to see the whole of human history as
directed towards a higher state through a process of seemingly inevitable
and predictable progress. Isn't it this kind of thinking that most sharply
distinguishes the modern world-view from those of the ancients and of

9. Blumenberg does not deny that modern "'self-assertion" often makes use of religious
language. He argues that it does so either to disguise its non-religious intentions or, as a
chosen "style," to dramatize its daring and extremism, so that this "secularization of
language" does not carry with it a secularization of the religious content. See Die Legitimitiit
der Neuzeit (hereafter: Legitimitat), pp. 62-71; Siikularisierung und Selbstbehauptung (here-
after: Siikularisierung), pp. 119-133.

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72 Wallace

primitive societies? Given the radical difference betw

modern world-views (which Blumenberg does not deny),
of Christianity as the primary experience intervening betw
seem - it certainly seems to Lowith - to be an arbitr
blindness to refuse to interpret the modern idea of progres
tion - a secularization - of the Christian attitude to the future. "Who
could deny," Lowith writes in his review of Blumenberg's book, "that
inheritance of a powerful tradition (and what tradition, as compared to th
political authorities, has been more potent and stable through two mill
of Western history than institutionalized Christianity?) is a co-determinin
factor even of all relatively new beginnings? That the idea of progr
should have only regional significance and a partial derivation, name
from the realm of the scientific discoveries and the literary-aesthe
controversies of the 17th century, and not touch the question of th
meaning and the course of history as such and as a whole, is as improb
as the assertion that the rationality and autonomy of man in the mod
age is an absolutely original and free-standing one." to'
Now Blumenberg has not made his last assertion, since the whole
Part Two of his book is devoted to showing the historical context an
provocation for the modern claims to autonomous rationality (part of
complex of "human self-assertion"). So there can be no questio
Blumenberg's ignoring pre-modern history, including Christianity. Bu
modernity did not spring into being spontaneously, from "outside" histor
as it were, then surely the idea of progress must be traceable to pre-mode
ideas? And what alternative to the secularization theory would Blum
berg propose for this purpose? and why?
Blumenberg has in fact answered these questions - though perhap
not always at sufficient length and in sufficient detail to make all of
answers easy to grasp. (Part One of his book was rewritten and consid
able expanded in the second edition, for this reason.) Blumenberg is aw
that what he has reconstructed as the "legitimate" modern concept
progress will not meet the requirements of the "ambitious" philosophie
history with which Lowith is (and the rest of us, in our disappointmen
cynicism, tend to be) preoccupied. He has a whole theory designed bot
account for this difference, and to show what he regards as the true role
Christianity in generating these "ambitious" modern philosophies of h
tory. And he has a complete account of the role of Christianity in t
genesis of his "legitimate" idea of progress as well (the account of th
origin of "human self-assertion," mentioned above). I will sketch the
explanations in that order: first, that of the "ambitious" philosophies
history, then that of human self-assertion and the idea of progress.

10. Philosophische Rundschau, 15 (1968), p. 197.

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 The Lowith-Blumenberg Debate 73

V. Blumenberg's Explanation of the Over-Ambitious

"Philosophies of History"

First, then, what are we to make of Condorcet, Saint-Simon, Proudhon,

Comte, Hegel, et al.? Blumenberg writes that "The idea of progress as a
conception of the meaning and shape of human history as a whole did not
become possible as a result of the transformation of theological eschatology
and its deprivation of its 'original' intention, . . . rather [the original,
modest idea of progress] had to be extended from its original regionally
circumscribed and objectively limited area of validity and exaggerated,
into the role of a 'philosophy of history,' if modern thought was to be able
to respond to a question which had remained, as it were, unmastered and
unsatisfied since theology had made it virulent."" This was the question of
the meaning of the totality of history - a question that the idea of
progress, and the Enlightenment in general, could not rationally answer,
but which was felt, because of the powerful influence of Christianity (the
Christianity that had presented Creation and Eschatology as the funda-
mental poles for the interpretation of the whole of history) on people's
fundamental expectations, to be a question that any world-view was
somehow obliged to answer. "The formulation of the idea of progress,"
Blumenberg goes on, "and its taking the place of the religious interpreta-
tion of history, are thus two distinct events . . . Belief in progress had its
empirical basis in the extension of the reality accessible to and manageable
by theory, and in the effectiveness of the scientific method employed for
this purpose. When this, which was experienced and demonstrably stable,
was translated into a faith encompassing the future, then the self-con-
sciousness of reason as the productive principle of history was made to
satisfy a need which in itself was not rational .. ." 12
But this process of over-extension or exaggeration was not a necessary
or an inevitable one. It was natural, undoubtedly, because we have an
ingrained habit of trying to answer every seemingly important question we
are confronted with, but it was not inevitable. "We are going to have to rid
ourselves,' Blumenberg writes, "of the idea that there is a fixed canon of
great questions," which have always oriented human inquiry and always
will. "Questions do not always precede their answers";'" some questions
only arise and become subjects of concern when the answer is believed to
be in hand. This holds for questions like those of the origin of evil, the
origin of the world, and the like - questions that the Greeks, for instance,
did not ask (at least, did not expect literal answers to) because they had not
heard of the (Gnostic) evil creator, or of original sin, or of a God who
created matter from nothing. And it also holds for the question of the

11. Legitimitat, p. 35. Cp. Siikularisierung, p. 60.

12. Legitimitiit, p. 36. Cp. Sakularisierung, pp. 60-61.
13. Legitimitarit, p. 42 and p. 43; Siikularisierung, p. 78.

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74 Wallace

meaning and pattern of history as a whole - one reason

not ask themselves this question was because they had n
creation or of the end of the world (except perhaps as ph
process of world-destruction and regeneration). And jus
tions have not always been with us, neither must we always r
binding for our intellecutal endeavor. This is not to say that
dismiss them with a derogatory epithet like "metaphysica
the positivist procedure, which limits intellectual endeav
advance by reference to a particular model of knowledg
physical sciences, usually) which it postulates, without histor
as simply definitive for knowledge in general. But neither sh
to consider the genesis of a question (of a classic "proble
some relevance to its status and claims on our concern
ongoing failure to deal with it satisfactorily (the kind of
consciousness is so widespread in contemporary philosophy
non of mere inexplicable weakness, rather than as some
and demanding historical interpretation in its own right. Cer
where a type of intellectual endeavor has been all but aban
case with the philosophy of history (in the "ambitious" se
more than just reflection on the methodology of historic
high time we consider why exactly it arose, what was the
of the question with which it was trying to deal, whether th
should be a live question for us, and for that matter whether
been a live question for the 18th and 19th centuries, or s
have been neutralized (amputated, in effect, from the ca
having a claim on modern thought) by means of critical
conditions of its origin and of its authentic significance.
Of course Lowith in his way is making a similar statem
distortion of our thinking by inappropriate questions (in
cepts or attitudes, he would say); but his diagnosis finds t
orientation and conceptual apparatus (at least in relat
inappropriate, rather than discriminating between the authen
problems (such as how to assert our needs and concerns e
world) and concepts (such as the concept of progress), and
and disastrous problems (such as the "meaning" of histor
admission of which leads to the over-extension and failure of those
concepts.
So Blumenberg's explanation for the predominance, among modern
philosophies of history, of over-ambitious theories of progress as the pattern

14. In the course of his book, Blumenberg cites several other instances of this kind of
process, in which a question put in place by Christianity is uncritically accepted by modern
thought as an eternal one which "must" be dealt with, and which then is "dealt with" in a
manner that is disastrous for the consistency of modernity. (See the passages cited in note 21,
below.)

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 The Loiwith-Blumenberg Debate 75

of history as a whole, is that modern thought in general was unable to

neutralize critically questions (like that of the meaning and pattern of
history as a whole) that it inherited from Christianity, as easily as it had
discredited the Christian answers. (And in fact Blumenberg points out that
Christianity itself had an exactly similar problem in relation to the ancient
world, and with similar results.) Hence the over-exertion, and the conse-
quent suspicions of false consciousness (i la "secularization"), that arise
in this field.

VI. Blumenberg's Account of the Origin of the Modern

So that is how, for Blumenberg, the "philosophy of history" is trace-

able, in terms of a certain kind of continuity but not through secularization,
to Christianity.'" But the idea of progress itself, the assertedly legitimate
idea of progress before it has been pressed into service as an answer to a
question which modern thought should not have tried to answer - does
Blumenberg think that this idea sprang into being from nothing, that its
origin was not "co-determined" by the great Christian tradition?
No he does not. But again his account of the manner of that "co-
determination," which is found in Part Two of his book, has nothing to do
with secularization, or with the continuity of any underlying substance or
tradition. As I have mentioned, Blumenberg interprets the concept of
"progress" as that of the implementation of "human self-assertion," which
in turn he sees as the fundamental characteristic of - and the legitimate
core of - the modern age in all its manifestations.'"6 And human self-
assertion he considers to be fundamentally intelligible only as a response to

15. Unlike L6with, Blumenberg does not include Marx within the modern complex of the
"philosophy of history" for which the two theorists offer their differing explanations. Lowith
himself remarked that in contrast to Hegel, Marx "maintains the original tension of a trans-
cendent faith over against the existing world" (Meaning in History, p. 51). (So this is the true
significance of Marxist "materialism"!) Blumenberg comments that "If the final state pro-
claimed by the Communist Manifesto translated impatience and dissatisfaction with 'infinite
progress' into a summons to definitive action, this nexus at least excludes the possibility that
both concepts of history, the finite and the infinite, could be secularized." (Legitimitit, p. 57;
compare Siikularisierung, p. 101.) And he goes on to suggest that the linguistic similarity
betwen the Manifesto's appeal and that of the messianic and gospel tradition indicates a
similar urgency, a "constant function for consciousness," but not an identity of content.
(Legitimitiit, p. 58; Siikularisierung, p. 102.) Blumenberg would presumably agree with
current critics that the faith of some "Marxists" in an inevitable mechanism of progress
through the final revolution is the result of a misunderstanding of Marx's model of social
history (a misunderstanding which repeats the syndrome of the genesis of the ambitious
"philosophies of history").
16. It is probably worth warning against the temptation to interpret this "self-assertion"
exclusively or even primarily by reference to technology, though the significance of the latter
is certainly to be found in its relationship to the former. On the relationship see Legitimitiat, p.
159, p. 170; Siikularisierung, p. 225, p. 236. For Blumenberg's defintion of self-assertion see
Legitimitiit, p. 91; Siikularisierung, p. 159.

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76 Wallace

the self-destructive working-out of the implications o

formulated in the era of the "Fathers" (Saint Augustine
out which he sees manifested in the doctrines of late-medieval nominalism
and which he summarizes under the rubric of "divine absolutism." The
great accomplishment of the "Fathers" had been to overcome the Gnosti
interpretation of Christ's message as one of world-denial (implicitly, o
world-demonization) by integrating the ancient positively-valued cosmos
into Christian doctrine and explaining the evil in the world as (not its
nature but) the punishment of man's original sin. But the price of thi
accomplishment was the introduction of the (entirely novel) concept o
absolutely arbitrary "freedom of the will," as both the source of origina
sin and the "explanation" of God's implication of all mankind in that sin
and of his impenetrable acts of grace in redeeming some (but not all) from
it. This will, in the form of "divine omnipotence," was the central theme of
medieval theology, and one which increasingly undercut both the Aristo
telianizing efforts of high scholasticism and every attempt to re-emphasize
the "human" relevance and meaning of Christ and the gospel. This
situation is displayed dramatically in Ockham's doctrine that there is no
reason for the creation of this (rather than any other possible) world, jus
as there is no reason for the workings of grace, beyond the fact that Go
wills it (quia voluit). Both salvation and the creation had thus been
deprived of all accessible meaning and reliability. The attitude prescribed
to man in this situation is not faith (which requires grace), and not love
(ditto, presumably), but simply blind submission. Human self-assertion, a
an alternative to this desperate way of being in the world, had to interes
itself not in fulfillment but in power, and in a world not of order but of pure
causal contingency - because these were all that were left to man at this
point. '7
Obviously this conclusion is not drawn simultaneously by everyone in
Europe, so that one could date the "event" of the inauguration of the
modern age. For some of us perhaps it has still not occurred. But for the
intepretation of the documents of the "history of ideas" it is an extremely
powerful hypothesis, as the extensive detail in Blumenberg's Parts Two,
Three and Four shows. And for those of us for whom Christianity is not
entirely defunct, it is a fascinating analysis of what's fundamentally at stake
and going on in both our Christian and our post-Christian consciousnesses.
Concerning the idea of progress and its relationship to Christianity, it is
hoped that this lightning summary shows how that idea (as part of human

17. To the Christian of course this appears as pride, fundamentally as self-deification.

Luther says man cannot by his nature want God to be God, but rather wants to be God
himself. We prefer to say that we seek to do what would make sense and have a chance of
success "even if there were no God," or perhaps to reinterpret God as the most perfect
being" who guarantees the goodness and reliability of the world (as in Descartes, Leibniz, and
eighteenth-century Deism). See Legitimititd, pp. 143- 144:; Sikularisierung, pp. 21(0-211.

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 The Lbwith-Blumenberg Debate 77

self-assertion) can be "co-determined" (indeed, in a way, wholly deter-

mined) in the most intimate fashion by Christianity, without being a meta-
morphosis of Christian conceptual material. It is a matter of responding to
a provocation, or taking up a challenge, rather than of taking over any idea
already present in the tradition whose crisis constitutes the challenge.
In addition, hopefully, this summary suggests how one can reasonably
speak of "legitimacy," in contrast to the illegitimacy implied by seculariza-
tion theories, in interpreting the origin of these modern ideas. "Legitimacy"
need not imply only innocence of theft, of living on stolen capital; it can
also refer to the consciousness of drawing a justified conclusion, of taking a
step which is appropriate in the circumstances. But to see why self-asser-
tion is a justified step to take under the circumstances, one has to take
Christianity, and especially its internal development and problems, more
seriously - and more historically - than is done by those who hypostatize
it as simply "faith" over against (Greek) "reason."

VII. "Transforming Appropriation" versus "Self-Assertion"

Unfortunately, Lowith in 1968 has not assimilated these ideas. He

concludes his review of Blumenberg's book with some thoughts on the
historical process which make this all too clear: ". .. actually there can be
no talk of legitimacy of illegitimacy, as applied to historical epochs, since in
the history of concepts, ideas and thoughts the [juristic concept of legiti-
macy] extends itself as far as the power to appropriate and transform the
contents of a tradition. The results, at any given time, of such a trans-
forming appropriation cannot be positively or negatively reckoned up
according to a standard of genuine ownership. [Blumenberg] fails to recog-
nize that in history, whether political or any other history, the never
completed results are always something different from what was intended
and expected by the founders of a new epoch. The births that take place in
historical life are all 'ilegitimate'."'8
The first thing that this passage makes absolutely clear is that for
L6with the process of historical transformation is seemingly conceivable
only as one of appropriation of a pre-existing substance - as appropriating,
transforming, but in any case continuing a tradition. That new structures
and ideas could come into existence in opposition to a reigning tradition
that is (consciously or otherwise) perceived as bankrupt - "determined
by" that tradition, as every opposition is determined by what it opposes,
but not in their substance a metamorphosis of that tradition - seems to be
inconceivable to Lowith. This great critic of historicism is so permeated by
it that he cannot consider the possibility of a relatively new beginning in

18. Loc. cit. (Phil. Rundsch. 15, 1968), p. 201.

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78 Wallace

history, except in its extreme claim (in, e.g., Descartes)

nality and freedom from historical context and condit
which for us now is so absurd as to refute itself and, in
refute all in any way comparable claims on behalf of mo
In a way, Lowith's position here seems familiar and in
Certainly his doubts about the application of notions of "
interpretation of history sound like the voice of our cons
brought up on the "scientific" distinction of fact and va
was it who in Meaning in History contrasted the modern
"one eye of faith and the other of reason," with the cle
Greek and the Christian world-views? Does this not sugg
of "illegitimacy," peculiar to the modern age? Or are w
that Christianity related to the Greek world in the same wa
to Christinaity: by "transforming appropriation" of the
traditions available to it, and that its claims to originality
are as transparently vain as the modern ones? This is cer
Lowith wants to assert. On the contrary, he thinks tha
Christianity was the one truly great break in the continuity
entry of "not just one epoch among others, but the decis
(unfortunately!) "separates us from the ancient world."
Isn't it clear that for Lowith some epochs are legitimate,
possessing an authentic principle and consistency, of whi
genuine "ownership," and some are not?
And isn't it reasonable, in the face of such claims on beha
anity (and on behalf of antiquity, for that matter), for mod
vindicate itself as something more coherent, authentic a
its turn than secularization theories will allow? Is it not r
effort, for the modern historian to distinguish (if he
authentic conceptual equipment and development of the elem
endeavor (as in the idea of progress), and the exagge
results of attempts to answer pre-modern questions by
means (as in the great "philosophies of history"), rather t
with the same brush? Isn't that what he must do, in keeping
sion of scientific rigor?

VIII. Practical Implications

L6with's and Blumenberg's positions, incompatible

theory, also have sharply different implications for so
practice. Lowith's attitude to contemporary social phen
systematic detachment: recognizing their reality but as

19. Ibid., p. 199.

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 The Liwith-Blumenberg Debate 79

entertaining neither hope nor fear for the future. A repeated emphasis in
his writing since Meaning in History has been on the constancy of human
nature: even the real possibility of nuclear warfare does not signify or call
for any fundamental change in man's relation to the world and to other
men, for such a change is impossible ("Man is no less man at the beginning
of his history than he will be at its end"). For L6with, Polybius's observa-
tion of a natural cycle of changes in constitutions, of turns from victory to
defeat and from subjugation to domination, is still the last word on man's
political nature.20 Clearly the only attitude that an individual can clear-
sightedly adopt in such circumstances is one of stoical self-sufficiency and
acceptance of what fate may bring. (Unless, of course, he chooses the
Christian turning, away from the world's reason and towards faith in trans-
cendent salvation.)
Blumenberg, on the other hand, has taken pains to deny the fateful
inevitability of the "steamroller"; to defend the possibility of man making
history more bearable for himself; and to defend the Enlightenment and its
would-be continuers (such as Marx) from charges of fundamentally false
consciousness, by reconstructing a legitimate (un-secularized) concept of
possible progress. He has also presented a diagnosis and critique of such
distortions and denials of the Enlightenment tradition as we encounter not
only in the "ambitious" philosophies of history, but also in the Enlighten-
ment's own tendency to leap too quickly into the disputes of optimism
versus pessimism; in the modern concept of sovereignty and of a public
sphere defined by the sovereign power; and in the modern tendency to
expect from "evolution" and other "natural" self-regulatory processes an
eventual solution to problems that have so far baffled our efforts at
practical solution.2
I think the practical relevance which all of these efforts of Blumenberg's
will have, if they are successful, should be clear. Lowith's thinking, for all
his disdain for the claim of the passing "age" upon philosophy, may
ironically at the moment be more in tune with the privatistic and cynical
"spirit of the age," but Blumenberg's is clearly more relevant to any
contemporary endeavor to take practical charge of events - to make
some real progress, rather than continue mainly to suffer from official
"progress" and its very possibly fatal consequences. There is much tradi-
tional wisdom in Lowith's position, but traditional wisdom is no more
adequate to our situation than is blind positivism. Hence the crucial
importance of getting a grasp on the processes in our history and in our
own thinking that Lowith and Blumenberg, in their different way, attempt
to illuminate.

20. Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Kritik der geschichtlichen Existenz (Stuttgart, 1960), p.
160. (Citation from Jiirgen Habermas, Theorie und Praxis [Neuwied and Berlin, 19631, p. 363).
21. Blumenberg's accounts of these latter syndromes, which I can mention here only in
passing, are presented in Legitimitiit, p. 61, pp. 59-61, and pp. 192-200; Sakularisierung,
pp. 103-118 and pp. 259-266.

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