Laughter of the Thracian Woman: A Protohistory of Theory (New Directions in German Studies) - Hardcover

This English translation of Das Lachen der Thrakerin, the original German of which first appeared with Suhrkamp in 1987, will no doubt intensify the impression among anglophone readers that Blumenberg is a decidedly historical and literary philosopher whose own thinking emerges from an almost obsessive level of engagement with the minutiae of Western intellectual history, including the genre of the philosophical anecdote ... Like many of Blumenberg's works, Das Lachen der Thrakerin demands a lot of the reader: a detailed knowledge of the Western tradition, not only of philosophy, but of letters in general, from the Presocratics to the present; and patience with an argumentative method which revels in the detours and the details, and which is thin on orienting summaries (here the highly informative Afterword and scholarly apparatus provided by Hawkins offer much historical context and orientation). * Modern Language Review * Greek astronomer Thales of Miletus was the original absent-minded professor. He was walking and studying the night sky, it is said, when he tripped and fell into a well, leading him to theorize that water-and not a god or gods-was the prime mover of reality. German-Jewish `philosophical anthropologist' Blumenberg follows the myth of Thales through the ages to show that the scientific endeavor is necessary but also fundamentally ridiculous. It culminates with an attack on `incomprehensible arrogance' as the most destructive human tendency, reaffirming modesty and skepticism. Today everything is made of data instead of water; Blumenberg, translated with great care by Spencer Hawkins, reminds me that we are still as ridiculous as Thales. -- David Auerbach * Slate Magazine * In its sweeping scope and singular focus, Hans Blumenberg's The Laughter of the Thracian Woman provides a monadic history of how to read the beginning of thinking as located precisely at the nexus of storytelling and reflection, literature and philosophy. In Blumenberg's series of relentless reconstructions and analyses, the telling and re-telling of the anecdote of Thales falling into a well - over and over again, from Plato to Heidegger, accompanied by the Thracian woman's laughter - comes to form the central image for the tension within philosophy between theoretical reflection and intuitive insight. * Paul Fleming, Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Director, Institute for German Cultural Studies (IGCS), Cornell University, USA * Hans Blumenberg stands as one of the most important and innovative thinkers of the twentieth century. As a philosopher, historian of science, and literary scholar, his work has made indispensable contributions to a broad range of fields across the Humanities and the Social Sciences. This impeccably nuanced translation of The Laughter of the Thracian Woman promises to enhance our understanding of Blumenberg's methodology and the theoretical premises that drive his thought, while offering key insights into the perennial tensions between theory and realism, contemplation and action, philosophical reflection and the Lebenswelt. * John T. Hamilton, William R. Kenan Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Chair, Germanic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University, USA *

This is the first English translation of Hans Blumenberg's "The Laughter of the Thracian Woman," complete with annotations and a critical afterword. Blumenberg describes the reception history and figurative function of the following anecdote found in Plato's "Theaetetus" dialogue: while focused on observing the stars, the early astronomer and proto-philosopher Thales of Miletus fails to see a well directly in his path and tumbles down. A Thracian servant girl laughs, amused that he sought to understand what was above him when he did not even know what was right in front of him. Variants of this story recur in texts by Diogenes Laertius, Church Fathers Tertullian and Eusebius, medieval and Renaissance-era preachers, Enlightenment figures Voltaire, Montaigne, Bacon, and Kant, and later by Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Blumenberg's own colleagues. Some of these philosophers sympathize with Thales' ambitions while others chastise his negligence. Whatever position they take on the story, Blumenberg shows that it stands in for the unknowable history leading up to the attitude known as "theory." By retelling the anecdote, philosophers reveal their distinctive values regarding absorption in curiosity, philosophy's past, and the demand that theorists abide by sanctioned methods and procedures. In this work and others, Blumenberg demonstrates that philosophers' most beloved images and anecdotes have become indispensable to philosophy "as metaphors," that is, as representations whose meanings remain indefinite and invite frequent reinterpretation.