The Hans Blumenberg Seminars (Convener: Audrey Borowski) mark the centenary of Hans Blumenberg’s (1920–1996) birth and provide an occasion to revisit some aspects of his life and thought.

Univ’s Nicholas Halmi, Margaret Candfield Tutorial Fellow in English; Professor of English and Comparative Literature, will be taking part in the first event on 5 October, when he will be in conversation with Rüdiger Zill, author of Der absolute Leser – Hans Blumenberg. Eine intellektuelle Biographie (2020).

All seminars take place on Mondays at 5pm (UK time) on Zoom at: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89764748793

The full schedule is:

5 October: Rüdiger Zill (Einstein Forum), author of Der absolute Leser – Hans Blumenberg. Eine intellektuelle Biographie (2020), in conversation with Nicholas Halmi (Oxford)

12 October: Jeffrey Barash (Amiens) The Power of Rhetoric. Hans Blumenberg, Ernst Cassirer and the Legacy of Herder

19 October: Jean-Claude Monod (ENS) Rhetorical concept and platonic concept of politics – from Blumenberg to the “post-truth era”

26 October: Leif Weatherby (NYU) Illegitimate Intelligence: Hans Blumenberg and AI

2 November: Angus Nicholls (QMUL) and Felix Heidenreich (Stuttgart) The Original Context and Contemporary Relevance of Hans Blumenberg’s Präfiguration

9 November: Paul Fleming (Cornell) Giving Pause: Blumenberg and Freud

16 November: Hannes Bajohr (Basel), Florian Fuchs (Princeton), and Joe Kroll (Princeton), editors and translators of History, Metaphors, Fables. A Hans Blumenberg Reader (2020) in conversation with Nicholas Halmi (Oxford) and Audrey Borowski (Oxford)

23 November: Eva Geulen (ZfL and Humboldt-Universität Berlin) Blumenberg “in the Horizon”

30 November: Willem Styfhalls (Leuven) Hans Blumenberg’s eschatology – On the Metaphor of the World’s Doom

7 December: Pini Ifergan (Bar-Ilan) Goethe and Philosophy? Blumenberg’s version

Published: 1 October 2020

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