Hans Blumenberg, lecteur et interprète de l'œuvre de Copernic

Résumé 0

The aim of this article is to analyse Hans Blumenberg’s reinterpretation of the Copernican revolution in his book on the genesis of Copernican world : Die Genesis der kopernikanischen Welt (1975). The main problem is to determine why such an event was impossible before Renaissance, since Aristarch of Samos had unsuccessfully conceived a heliocentric system in Antiquity. Correlatively, what kind of changes among historical conditions of early modern thought made possible a progressive emergence of copernicanism ? Blumenberg’s complex answer requires a peculiar two-faced methodology : a preparatory history called “Vorgeschichte ” which is controlled by a history of the real effects (“Wirkungsgeschichte ”) produced in the world by an intellectual changes. Thanks to this double perspective, Blumenberg is striving to show that Copernicus was neither a “foreign body” in his time nor a relay of the secularization thesis, but an agent of self-affirmation (“Selbstbehauptung ”) of man proper to modern times.