Myth and the Human Sciences

This book presents a critical analysis of the theory of myth outlined by the twentieth-century German philosopher Hans Blumenberg. Angus Nicholls introduces the reader to Blumenberg’s Work on Myth (1979), as well as to its broader intellectual background and its relationship to other eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century theories of myth. Nicholls also places Blumenberg's theory of myth within the political context of West Germany, drawing on Blumenberg's unpublished work to show that his theory of myth amounted to a reckoning with the legacy of National Socialism.