The Myths of Enlightenment

For rationalists such as Jürgen Habermas, Blumenberg was too skeptical about abstraction and simplification; he was also too mistrustful of our capacity for enlightenment and self-awareness. His late work collects anecdotes without much explanation or categorization; it seems to rely half on its reader’s presumed erudition and half on the anecdotes’ intrinsic charm. Beginning with La Fontaine’s fable about the lion painter, Lions cycles through a dozen anecdotes Blumenberg collected and commented on late in life.

Source: bostonreview.net