Hans Blumenberg and the Anthropology of Stoicism

The reception of Stoicism by the influential and extraordinarily erudite German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has never been studied. My first task in this chapter is to gather and elucidate key passages from Blumenberg's vast oeuvre, much of it untranslated into English. My second and more important task is to argue that Blumenberg's unique approach, which is grounded in his minimalist philosophical anthropology, helps us to understand dimensions of Stoicism that the Stoics themselves did not theorize. I demonstrate this by clarifying and critically elaborating his comments about several obscure Stoic texts, which have hitherto seemed to be of no philosophical significance.