Excerpt

The world has to wait. Martin Heidegger¹ Thus we philosophize for the time being. Hans Blumenberg²

“The war is over, we should go back to philosophy” was the sentiment expressed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in one of the first issues of his and Jean-Paul Sartre's new journal Les Temps modernes in Paris, May 1945. Having escaped from a work camp, Hans Blumenberg could hardly have taken any notice of this thought, but he was certainly and decisively in agreement with Merleau-Ponty.³ Since then we have become accustomed to Adorno's verdict that after Auschwitz, poetry is no longer…