Secolarizzazione, trasposizioni, modernità. Uno scambio epistolare tra Hans Blumenberg e Reinhart Koselleck

The essay discusses Blumenberg’s and Koselleck’s theories on secularization, starting from a letter Koselleck sent to Blumenberg in 1975. In a book published the previous year (Säkularisierung und Selbstbehauptung, 1974), Blumenberg had criticized the theory of secularization that Koselleck had developed in his doctoral thesis (Kritik und Krise, 1959), according to which philosophical concepts are born as secularized products of millenarian expectations. Blumenberg had contested this reconstruction and supported the complete independence of philosophical concepts from theology. In his response, Koselleck, on one hand, reaffirmed his position, denying the autonomy of philosophical concepts from theology; on the other hand, he partially agreed with Blumenberg, because admitted the possibility of an immanent use of philosophical concepts.