Abstract

How can historical change be thought, in a very concrete way? How do we philosophically arrive at concepts that represent this change and at the same time grant reliability in an idealistic sense? This means that idealities must endure in the course of history and at the same time grant the possibility of historical change. If the problem of historicity is addressed in this way, a theory of history has to mediate between statics and dynamics. It has to grant both the stability and dynamics that are needed to ‘transport’ thoughts across generations and epochs. As I intend to show, Hans Blumenberg’s concept of historicity is based on these assumptions. The article starts from a transcendental account of the lifeworld and links it to Edmund Husserl’s Urstiftung in order to illustrate how historicity and historical change can be conceptualized philosophically.