Passaggi. Blumenberg e Foucault sulle discontinuità della storia

This article compares Hans Blumenberg’s The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (1966) and Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things (1966), focusing on their respective conceptions of historical discontinuity. Although developed within different intellectual frameworks, both authors challenge continuist views of history: Blumenberg critiques the secularization theorem, while Foucault opposes philosophies of the subject and historical narratives grounded in temporal continuity. Through a comparative analysis, the essay addresses three central questions: how discontinuity can be conceived, how it can be observed, and how it can be explained. The comparison reveals distinct yet partially convergent theoretical models. Foucault alternates between a conception of epistemes separated by radical breaks and a plural understanding of historical temporalities, whereas Blumenberg interprets historical change through the notions of ‘reoccupation’ (Umbesetzung) and ‘structures of needs’, which mediate continuity and innovation. The article argues that both thinkers are not merely advocates of discontinuity; they also expose its conceptual and epistemological limits. Historical discontinuity proves inseparable from forms of continuity that make it intelligible and observable. Consequently, the study suggests that both Blumenberg’s and Foucault’s reflections transform the analysis of historical change into a critical diagnosis of the present and of the conditions of modernity itself.