Paradigms for a Metaphorology

Hans Blumenberg, Robert Savage

Description

"Paradigms for a Metaphorology may be read as a kind of beginner's guide to Blumenberg, a programmatic introduction to his vast and multifaceted oeuvre. Its brevity makes it an ideal point of entry for readers daunted by the sheer bulk of Blumenberg's later writings, or distracted by their profusion of historical detail. Paradigms expresses many of Blumenberg's key ideas with a directness, concision, and clarity he would rarely match elsewhere. What is more, because it served as a beginner's guide for its author as well, allowing him to undertake an initial survey of problems that would preoccupy him for the remainder of his life, it has the additional advantage that it can offer us a glimpse into what might be called the 'genesis of the Blumenbergian world.'"-from the Afterword by Robert SavageWhat role do metaphors play in philosophical language? Are they impediments to clear thinking and clear expression, rhetorical flourishes that may well help to make philosophy more accessible to a lay audience, but that ought ideally to be eradicated in the interests of terminological exactness? Or can the images used by philosophers tell us more about the hopes and cares, attitudes and indifferences that regulate an epoch than their carefully elaborated systems of thought?In Paradigms for a Metaphorology, originally published in 1960 and here made available for the first time in English translation, Hans Blumenberg (1920-1996) approaches these questions by examining the relationship between metaphors and concepts. Blumenberg argues for the existence of "absolute metaphors" that cannot be translated back into conceptual language. These metaphors answer the supposedly naive, theoretically unanswerable questions whose relevance lies quite simply in the fact that they cannot be brushed aside, since we do not pose them ourselves but find them already posed in the ground of our existence. They leap into a void that concepts are unable to fill.An afterword by the translator, Robert Savage, positions the book in the intellectual context of its time and explains its continuing importance for work in the history of ideas.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Philosophy
• Literary theory

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801460043
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Paradigms for a Metaphorology

Series editor: Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Cornell University

Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought publishes new English- language books in literary studies, criticism, cultural studies, and intellectual history pertaining to the German-speaking world, as well as translations of im- portant German-language works.Signale“modern” in the broad- construes est terms: the series covers topics ranging from the early modern period to the present.Signaleare published under a joint imprint of Cornell University books Press and Cornell University Library in electronic and print formats. Please see http://signale.cornell.edu/.

Paradigms for a Metaphorology

Hans Blumenberg

Translated from the German with an afterword by Robert Savage

A Signale Book

Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library Ithaca, New York

The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International–Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society VG WORT and the German Publishers & Booksellers Association.

Originally published under the titleParadigmen zu einer Metaphorologie, by Hans Blumenberg. © Hans Blumenberg 1960. All rights reserved by Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main.

English translation copyright © 2010 by Cornell University Translator’s Afterword copyright © 2010 by Robert Savage

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2010 by Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Blumenberg, Hans. [Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie. English] Paradigms for a metaphorology / Hans Blumenberg ; translated from the German with an afterword by Robert Savage. p. cm. — (Signale : modern German letters, cultures, and thought) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-4925-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Metaphor. I. Savage, Robert (Robert Ian) II. Title. III. Series: Signale (Ithaca, N.Y.)

PN228.M4B61613 2010 808—dc22 2010013565

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™ The Unicode Greek font SymbolGreekU used to print this work is available from Linguist’s Software, Inc., PO Box 580, Edmonds, WA 98020-0580 USA tel [phone] www.linguistsoftware.com.

A Note on the Translation

Contents

Introduction  I. Metaphorics of the ‘Mighty’ Truth  II. Metaphorics of Truth and Pragmatics of Knowledge  III. A Terminological and Metaphorological Cross Section of the Idea of Truth  IV. Metaphorics of the ‘Naked’ Truth  V. Terra Incognita and ‘Incomplete Universe’ as Metaphors of the Modern Relationship to the World  VI. Organic and Mechanical Background Metaphorics VII. Myth and Metaphorics VIII. Terminologization of a Metaphor: From ‘Verisimilitude’ to ‘Probability’  IX. Metaphorized Cosmology  X. Geometric Symbolism and Metaphorics Translator’s Afterword. Metaphorology: A Beginner’s Guide

Index of Names Subject Index

vii

1 6 13

31 40

52 62 77

81 99 115 133

147 151

A Note on the Translation

I have tried to follow the presentation of Blumenberg’s text as closely as possible, generally only deviating from this principle where he quotes in Greek, Latin, Ital- ian, or French. On these occasions I have provided English translations in the main text and consigned the original wording to the footnotes, except in the case of very short quotations, where the phrase in the original language follows in parentheses upon the English translation. My insertions in the text and notes are enclosed in square brackets. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. I wish to thank Bryan Cooke for insisting that I translate this book, Peter Uwe Hohendahl for accepting it for publication, David Roberts and Paul Fleming for offering valuable feedback, and Helen Slaney for sharing her expertise in Greek and Latin. During the revision process I benefited greatly from consulting Didier Gammelin’s French translation,Paradigmes pour une métaphorologieVrin, (Paris: 2006). An Ernst Keller Travelling Fellowship from the Australian Academy of the Humanities, combined with a Marbach Stipend, allowed me to spend a month at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv researching and writing the afterword; my thanks to Marcel Lepper for the friendly interest he showed in my work, and to Dorit Krusche for guiding me through Blumenberg’s posthumous papers. Finally, I am grateful to Bettina Blumenberg, Henning Ritter, and Peter Rothacker for gra- ciously granting me permission to quote from Blumenberg’s unpublished postdoc- toral dissertation, “Die ontologische Distanz,” and from his correspondence with Joachim Ritter and Erich Rothacker in my afterword.

Introduction

Let us try for a moment to imagine that modern philosophy had proceeded accord- ing to the methodological program set out for it by Descartes, and had arrived at that definitive conclusion that Descartes himself believed to be eminently attain- able. This ‘end state’ of philosophy, which historical experience permits us to en- tertain only as a hypothesis, would be defined according to the criteria set out in the four rules of the Cartesian “Discours de la méthode,” in particular by the clar- ity and distinctness that the first rule requires of all matters apprehended in judg- 1 ments. To this ideal of full objectification would correspond the perfection of a terminology designed to capture the presence and precision of the matter at hand in well-defined concepts. In its terminal state, philosophical language would be purely and strictly ‘conceptual’: everythingcanbe defined, therefore everythingmustbe

1. Descartes defines the characteristics of clarity and distinctness as follows:Claram voco illam (sc. ideam) quae menti attendenti praesens et aperta est . . .(Oeuvres,ed. Adam-Tannery, VIII, 13) [I call a per- ception clear when it is present and accessible to an attentive mind . . . ];Distinctam autem illam, quae, cum clara sit, ab omnibus aliis ita seiuncta est et praecisa, ut nihil plane aliud, quam quod clarum ist, in se contineat(VIII, 22) [I call a perception distinct if, as well as being clear, it is so sharply separated from all other perceptions that it contains within itself only what is clear; René Descartes,The Philosophical Writings of Descartes,trans. John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 1: 207– 8]. The debt to the Stoic doctrine of knowledge and its ideal of cataleptic presentation is unmistakable, although it has yet to be sufficiently clarified.