The Encounter of Two Philosophers with ‘the Crisis of Modernity’: Karl Popper and Hans Blumenberg

Since the emergence of modernity, and in response to its myriad aspects and potentials, which are constantly unfolding, countless reactions have kept emerging in almost all quarters of the globe. A large variety of anti-modern reactions, the common core of which is perhaps the idea that modernity, in one way or another, is illegitimate, stand out among these responses. According to some of these anti-modern responses, modernity has usurped the characteristics and features of religion, which has been the soul as well as the main shaping force of the pre-modern era and has reproduced it in a corrupted form. Two German-speaking philosophers, Karl Popper and Hans Blumenberg, are among the intellectuals who have defended modernity against the onslaught of anti-modern tendencies. In this paper, I briefly, though critically, compare and contrast the approaches as well as some of the arguments of these two thinkers in defence of modernity.