Laughter of the Thracian Woman

This is the first translation into English, with annotations and a critical introduction, of Hans Blumenberg's "The Laughter of the Thracian Woman." Blumenberg's book describes the reception history of an anecdote, found in Plato's Theatetus dialogue, wherein the early astronomer and proto-philosopher Thales of Miletus observes the stars while walking one night, until, failing to see a well in front of him, he tumbles down--perhaps to his death. A Thracian servant-girl laughs at how he tried to see what was above him without noticing what was right in front of his nose. This story and its variants recur in texts by Diogenes Laertius, then by Church Fathers Tertullian and Eusebius, Medieval and Renaissance-era preachers, Enlightenment figures Voltaire, Montaigne, Bacon, and Kant, and later by Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Blumenberg's own colleagues. Whether the philosopher citing this anecdote sympathizes with Thales' priorities or chastises his negligence, Blumenberg shows how the story stands in for the unknowable history leading up to the intellectual attitude now known as "theory." This improbable story fills the gap to greater satisfaction than a philosophical claim would, precisely because it is malleable. The story can express various philosophers' subjective attitudes about which passions are worth falling for and which mistakes are absurd enough to laugh at. By retelling the anecdote, philosophers reveal their distinctive values regarding absorption in curiosity, philosophy's past, and the demand that theorists abide by sanctioned methods and procedures. "The Laughter of the Thracian Woman: A Protohistory of Theory" implicitly relies on Blumenberg's theory of metaphor. He locates the metaphors most beloved among generations of philosophers, and then, by observing their historically changing meanings, he shows how these have become indispensable to philosophy "as metaphors," that is, as representations whose meanings remain undefined.