Against Rigor: Hans Blumenberg on Freud and Arendt

In the various texts posthumously published in translation in 2017 as The Rigorism of Truth, Hans Blumenberg audaciously compared Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism and Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem as efforts to debunk founding myths of Jewish identity. He accused both thinkers of robbing the Jews of the ideological ammunition needed to confront anti-Semitism and defend the creation of the state of Israel. Both, he claimed, were moral rigorists who fetishized truth telling despite its practical consequences. Although this charge may well be dubious, especially in the case of Arendt, who understood the risks of veracity in the political realm, Blumenberg himself pursued uncomfortable truths wherever they led. By providing a reflective defense of the function of myth (along with metaphor) rather than its alleged meaning, he demonstrated his own unwillingness to abandon logos for mythos.