Rigorism of truth

"Moses the Egyptian" and other writings on Freud and Arendt

Hans Blumenberg

Translated by Joe Paul Kroll

In "Moses the Egyptian"—the centerpiece of Rigorism of Truth, the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg addresses two defining figures in the intellectual history of the twentieth century: Sigmund Freud and Hannah Arendt. Unpublished during his lifetime, this essay analyzes Freud’s Moses and Monotheism (1939) and Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), and discovers in both a principled rigidity that turns into recklessness because it is blind to the politics of the unknown.