„Denken ist Ausnahmezustand“: Hans Blumenbergs Theorie der Lebenswelt

The purpose of this paper is to give an introduction to the philosophy of Hans Blumenberg by discussing the concept of Life-World (Lebenswelt) in his work, and especially in the posthumous and not yet commented Theorie der Lebenswelt. We will show that the concept of Life-World is at the very center of his thinking, not only because it combines metaphorological, phenomenological and epistemological problems and questions, but mostly because it helps us to understand the very structure of reality. For Blumenberg, the Life-World is a state of mind characterized by pure self-evidence and obviousness. What separates his theory from other theories of the Life-World (mainly Husserl’s, but also – which will be discussed in the paper – Michel Henry’s phenomenology of life), is his will to evacuate all sorts of romanticization of the Life-World itself (i.e. the transformation of this philosophical concept into an utopia of pure happiness or a natural state of peace, as in Rousseau) as well as the voluntarism in the genealogy of science and philosophy: the beginning of philosophy is in the Life-World, which is its exact opposite, a state of mere indifference. In the paper, we will show the dynamics of the Life- World, i.e. the systematic restoration of strata of obviousness even in phenomenology, give examples of its function in common life and show how this self-defending structure breaks out and gives birth to theory.