Defense of ‘Expanded Reason’ in Hans Blumenberg: The Case for the Science of Boredom

The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg always advocated the need to adopt an open and integrating view of the wisdom from different disciplines of knowledge when delving into the intricacies of the reality in which we find ourselves immersed, not only as a formula to try and embrace it in theoretical terms, but as a necessary resource to live in a meaningful way. Particularly when speaking of the human being, Blumenberg warned that the aspects that make up our life experience can only be apprehended based on a methodological approach in which there is room not only for scientific rationality, but also for humanistic and even spiritual contributions. This vision coincides with the commitment to what has recently been described, based on the various calls for multidisciplinary research made by Pope Benedict XVI, under the term ‘expanded reason.’ A review of Blumenberg’s methodology in the pursuit of knowledge of things can help us to better understand what is at stake in the demand that this term has been making since the mid-twentieth century and, more than ever, in the present era. In this chapter, I will explore what it means to approach the human phenomena that take place in the reality in which we live from the perspective of expanded reason. However, I will also observe how the philosopher has put into practice this expanded reason approach to the study of an aspect of human life to which he attributed unparalleled importance in the history of humanity: the experience of boredom.