Hans Blumenberg’s philosophical project: metaphorology as anthropology
Pini Ifergan
Continental Philosophy Review ISSN 1387-2842 Cont Philos Rev DOI 10.1007/s11007-015-9342-4
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Author's personal copy Cont Philos Rev DOI 10.1007/s11007-015-9342-4
Hans Blumenberg’s philosophical project: metaphorology as anthropology Pini Ifergan1
Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015
Abstract Philosophical anthropology emerges, partly at least, by dissatisfied and critical followers of Husserl’s phenomenology, such as Max Scheler and the young Martin Heidegger. They were dissatisfied with what they saw as a disregard of the concrete human being as an essential part of phenomenological analysis. They tried instead to claim that philosophy must search for, and anchor, its foundations exclusively in the human being, not as an abstract entity, but as an existential, concrete, physical being. In this specific philosophical, as well as historical, context this paper suggests to locate Hans Blumenberg’s philosophical project by reconstructing his unique version of philosophical anthropology. The main aim of the paper is to describe and understand the way Blumenberg combines his theory of metaphors (metaphorology) together with his anthropological considerations regarding the origin and emergence of human culture into his own version of philosophical anthropology. A version that can be seen as joining the original attempt of philosophical anthropology to overcome the deficiency in Husserl’s phenomenological project. Keywords
Hans Blumenberg Metaphor Philosophical anthropology Culture
In June 1931 Edmund Husserl went on a lecture tour, the only such tour he ever set out on. It took him to Berlin, Frankfurt, and Halle, in each of which he delivered a talk entitled ‘‘Phenomenology and Anthropology.’’1 At first glance, the title seems innocuous, in the spirit of the many scholarly studies that expound the differences 1
The talk was first published in 1941, see Husserl (1941, pp. 1–14). For details of the lecture tour, see Schuhmann (1977, pp. 379–382).
& Pini Ifergan
[email protected] 1
Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
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between two given scholarly disciplines. But this impression is incorrect, and hides the real purpose of the lectures, as well as the real reason for choosing this topic. In fact, Husserl’s true motivation for the lecture tour was to defend his philosophical system—phenomenology—against what he took to be a very real threat to its future, namely, the ‘‘philosophical anthropology’’ movement. This is evidenced by the opening sentence of the lecture he gave in Berlin on June 10, 1931. ‘‘As is well known, over the last decade some of the younger generation of German philosophers have been gravitating with ever increasing speed toward philosophical anthropology.’’2 Although he does not say so explicitly, Husserl took the fact that it was two of his prote´ge´s—Martin Heidegger and Max Scheler—who were responsible for philosophical anthropology’s rapid growth, as the main threat to his own philosophical project. Heidegger and Scheler presented the shift to philosophical anthropology as the culmination of the phenomenological undertaking, which they thought had been fully exhausted. In an April 19, 1931 letter to one of his students, Roman Ingarden, Husserl remarks that the views being disseminated by Scheler and Heidegger were the utter antithesis of his own, and hence he planned to reread their writings carefully in preparation for his ‘‘Phenomenology and Anthropology’’ lecture tour. The works in question were Scheler’s (1928) The Human Place in the Cosmos3 which in many ways remains to this day the foundational text of philosophical anthropology, and Heidegger’s Being and Time, especially the first section of the first part, ‘‘The Theme of the Analytic of Dasein.’’ Ironically, the latter work was published in 1927 as volume 8 of the Jahrbuch fu¨r Philosophie und pha¨nomenologische Forschung, which was edited by Husserl and served as the chief platform for the advancement of phenomenology. In the lecture itself, Husserl did not mention by name either these works or their authors. Instead, he invokes Wilhelm Dilthey and the foundational principle of Lebensphilosophie (life-philosophy), in which he sees a new form of anthropology. At the heart of this new anthropology is the following claim: True philosophy must search for, and anchor, its foundations exclusively in man himself, not as an abstract entity, but as an existential, concrete, physical being. So as to leave no doubt in his listeners’ minds that his interest in the new philosophical movement and its principles is not merely academic, but deeply personal—after all, he identified completely with phenomenology as his life project—Husserl adds that the anthropological ‘turn’ is taken to be not simply a conceptual refinement of phenomenology, but a reform that phenomenology must undergo if it is to fulfill its philosophical potential. Husserl, it seems, would have been willing to accept the anthropological turn had it not been presented as an alternative to phenomenology, for in that case it would have been possible for him to criticize the new development as failing to grasp the essence of philosophy as a pure science, a science characterized by a method that distinguishes it from other realms of knowledge, that makes no assumptions about man, his physical nature, and psychological makeup.
2
Husserl (1941, p. 1).
3
Scheler (1928/2009).
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Starting in the early 1970s, if not sooner, Hans Blumenberg situated his philosophical project in the very thematic context Husserl outlined in his 1931 lecture. First of all, Blumenberg sought to understand the source of the profound concern expressed by Husserl in particular, and more generally, by the genre of philosophy Husserl attempts to defend, about the inroads into phenomenology being made by anthropological thought. Second, he sought to provide a novel justification for philosophy that insists on the connection between that which is human, and the conditions that render human existence possible, on the one hand, and that which delimits the form and content of philosophical reasoning, on the other. To put it differently, Blumenberg sought to overturn the basic claim that there must be a firm boundary between inquiry into the notion of reason and inquiry into the question of the nature of, and necessary conditions for, human existence. Blumenberg’s most comprehensive effort to grapple with these formidable tasks is his posthumously-published Description of Man.4 This voluminous work—920 pages of unusually dense scientific exposition—is divided into two main parts. The first, ‘‘Phenomenology and Anthropology,’’ offers a rigorous interpretive analysis of phenomenology, emphasizing the attempt to determine what is involved in realizing the Husserlian mandate of going ‘‘back to the things themselves’’ (zuru¨ck zu den Sachen selbst), or as Blumenberg puts it, returning to man himself, after carrying out the methodologically necessary step of phenomenological reduction—focusing solely on describing the experience of pure consciousness. The second part, entitled ‘‘Contingency and Visibility,’’ outlines a possible answer to the fundamental question addressed by philosophical anthropology, namely, What is man?5 Blumenberg tries to answer on the basis of commitment to the phenomenological method, though forgoing its presumptuous claim to seek a pure description of the form (eidos) of the individual consciousness without bringing to bear the eidos of the species homo sapiens. In Description of Man, then, Blumenberg’s goal is to set forth his own anthropological turn, a move that, while remaining conceptually committed to the phenomenological framework, offers a justification for recourse to scientific knowledge. For Blumenberg, from the moment Darwin’s theory of human evolution was published, it was essential for the comprehension and phenomenological description of human consciousness. In order to understand the change that Darwin’s discovery forces on the philosophical study of mankind, Blumenberg draws an analogy between it and the shift away from the theological view that God was the source of the human spirit to the view that the incarnation of spirit in humans was a naturalistic process. Describing the process by which pure consciousness arose in members of the species homo sapiens can shed light on both the anthropological direction in which Blumenberg steers phenomenology, and, notwithstanding that turn, on Blumenberg’s basic fidelity to the Husserlian outlook. Before Darwin, the process by which the pure consciousness of self arose in the human body, Blumenberg explains, was 4
Blumenberg (2006).
5
Blumenberg uses gendered terminology, e.g., Mensch, ‘man,’ though the intended scope of the terms in question encompasses both genders. It should be kept in mind that Blumenberg wrote most of his works when sexist language was still the norm. As the standard translations of his works retain the gendered terminology, and this article cites these translations, I have not ‘adjusted’ Blumenberg’s language.
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conceived in terms of secularized parallels to the religious metaphor of God’s embodiment, His incarnation in the flesh. According to this metaphor, only after God decided to incarnate His spirit in an earthy form, is man presented as having been chosen or created, from among all the possible creatures that God could have chosen to create. Once Darwin’s theory of evolution had been established, however, this metaphor no longer suffices to describe the embodiment of the spirit in earthly form. Just as Darwin’s theory impacted the conception of the genesis of the human soul, so too, Blumenberg argues, acceptance of the Darwinian paradigm as historical-naturalistic fact mandates anthropological reform of phenomenology, indeed, mandates the formulation of phenomenological anthropology. This, I maintain, is the broader historical-philosophical context within which we must situate the Blumenbergian project. In the present article, I will not seek to offer a reconstruction of the proposed phenomenological anthropology, which was one of Blumenberg’s last endeavors. His phenomenology-based anthropology is sketched out mainly in the writings that were published posthumously in Description of Man, and in a work devoted to Husserl’s phenomenology, Zu den Sachen und zuru¨ck (To the Things and Back).6 Rather, I will explore a different attempt by Blumenberg to defend the anthropological turn in philosophy. This attempt does not depend on the phenomenological method, but instead has recourse to analysis and explication of metaphors as a linguistic phenomenon, with emphasis on its interconnection with conceptual philosophical discourse. Blumenberg developed this line of thought in a series of studies that were published from the 1950s to the end of the 1980s, studies that are generally characterized as metaphorological, and not necessarily anthropological. As I will show, however, they can also be seen as part of Blumenberg’s effort to overcome philosophy’s anthropology-phobia, and provide a justification for anthropology’s inroads into philosophical discourse. It has been argued that Blumenberg’s philosophical oeuvre can be sorted into two clear-cut categories: metaphorology and anthropology. The metaphorological works address issues that come to light when we reflect on metaphors; the anthropological works focus on the emergence of the human being as a creature of culture. Shipwreck with Spectator, for instance, would fall into the former category, and Work on Myth, the latter. Though there is a certain logic to this topical classification, to which many subscribe (see, e.g., Konersmann 1999; Haverkamp 2001; Betzler 1995; Stoellger 2000), it should nonetheless be evident to anyone who is familiar with Blumenberg’s writings that the two categories are not mutually exclusive, but linked by a complex conceptual web. Even those to whom this linkage is manifest, however, may find it difficult to give a full account of the said interconnections. For Blumenberg arouses our interest in the relationship between metaphorology and anthropology, but stubbornly refrains from providing a precise and unambiguous explication of it. Ho¨hlenausga¨nge (1989)—the last of the works published during Blumenberg’s lifetime—epitomizes this balancing act between temptation and refusal. The first part of the book presents an anthropological-philosophical account of a primordial crisis that calls to mind the ‘state of nature’ invoked by various social contract theories. Blumenberg endeavors to reconstruct the trauma that ensued when 6
Blumenberg (2002).
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primordial man, having ventured beyond his protected and familiar environment, sensed his defenselessness and experienced extreme existential anxiety. Taking refuge in a cave was the first step toward extricating himself from this predicament. The modicum of safety within its sheltering confines enabled the cave-dwellers to prepare themselves for a renewed encounter with the inexorable reality outside. This encounter was by no means voluntary. To survive in the cave they had no choice but to leave the cave to secure the necessities of life: ‘‘The dilemma of the cave is precisely that while living in it, they have no source of livelihood. Life in the cave is taken care of by leaving the cave.’’7 The remainder of Ho¨hlenausga¨nge, which constitutes the preponderance of the book, appears to be a purely metaphorological study. As is characteristic of Blumenberg’s other overtly metaphorological works as well, the discussion revolves around a single metaphor—the cave. It surveys the cave metaphor’s numerous appearances over the course of Western intellectual history, from Plato’s cave allegory to Wittgenstein’s remark that the task of philosophy is ‘‘to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.’’ Between these polar instances of the cave metaphor in the annals of Western philosophy, Blumenberg describes a wide range of variations on the cave metaphor. Although the different invocations of the metaphor (the cave, the labyrinth, the fly-bottle) are clearly distinct from one another, and from the original Platonic image of the cave, the core concept, the feature the various instances all share with the original, is always preserved. Blumenberg entices the reader to join him in tracing the metaphor with a dramatic rhetorical declaration. Any attempt to imagine the moment when human consciousness first emerged, he proclaims, entails a paradox: We know that there was a beginning, yet it is equally certain that we are unable to conceive of such an event. Lacking a direct resolution to the paradox, we must either resign ourselves to it, or devise a surrogate means of conceiving the inconceivable. As Blumenberg puts it, it is incumbent upon us to offer a ‘‘a surrogate for the pale externality of knowledge.’’8 The substitute mode of describing the moment in question so as to extricate ourselves from the originary paradox takes the form of an anthropological-philosophical story about the existential crisis that befell our prehistoric forebears. The crisis ensues due to a radical change in their physical environment; if they are to survive, they must respond, and indeed, they do so, by taking refuge in a cave. It is in the cave that humankind reconstitutes itself, acquiring the basic means of coping with the radical change in its environment that propelled it to seek refuge within its confines. In essence, Blumenberg’s story is nothing short of an attempt to gain access to that which we cannot conceive—the primordial moment when humanity became what it is. It does not do so in the abstract, but rather, in a highly naturalistic manner, linking the constitutive moment, as it were, to the prehistoric stage in human development when our ancestors took refuge in caves. It is hard to deny the compelling seductiveness of this effort to trace the moment in question, albeit indirectly—that is, not scientifically, but by narrating an imagined account— 7
Blumenberg (1989, p. 29). Here and elsewhere, translations of passages from untranslated works are my own.
8
Ibid., p. 11.
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especially for those for whom even the mere thought of that originary moment is tantalizing. Yet Blumenberg is unwilling to fully satisfy our curiosity. His account is intended as a kind of consolation prize, to compensate the reader for the impossibility of truly conceiving of the pivotal moment when self-awareness first emerged. Blumenberg elects not to adduce the scientific knowledge available to us regarding man’s pre-history in support of his alternative account of the primordial moment. Instead, he generates in his readers the pronounced impression that exploring the various invocations of the cave allegory provides a convincing justification of, or at least circumstantial support for, the anthropological approach to describing that moment. Although the alternative account is inherently hypothetical and speculative, and can never be empirically verified, its credibility is directly proportional to the depth and richness of the cave metaphor’s illustrious intellectual provenance. Blumenberg never explicitly states that the history of the cave metaphor serves to corroborate the plausibility of the anthropological-philosophical account of homo sapiens’ origins. His omitting to make such a declaration has the effect of lowering the reader’s expectations and rendering the whole exercise of tracking the metaphor less enticing, as it leaves open the possibility that the exact opposite is the case, namely, that the anthropological description of the primordial event is actually meant to explain the richness, diversity, and historical robustness of the cave metaphor. So the explanatory relationship is reversed: The anthropological description is intended to serve as an explanation for the considerable effort Blumenberg is putting into investigation of the history of the cave metaphor. Without the anthropological description, the idea that metaphors—which Blumenberg views as non-conceptual—have histories seems less than convincing, since the metaphor’s putative history loses the anchor that renders the history a coherent account of the metaphor. Yet Blumenberg’s refusal to satisfy his readers’ desire for an unequivocal statement of the relationship between the metaphorological and the anthropological accounts is only partial. And indeed, after a particularly speculative passage in his anthropological description of the emergence of mankind, where he claims that ‘‘it is possible to understand’’ the inclination of early man, a landdwelling creature, to seek refuge in a hidden, sheltered place, as an attempt to reconstruct the living conditions of a much earlier stage in his development, indeed, a pre-human stage when man-to-be was still a marine organism, he stops for a minute and clarifies what he means by ‘‘it is possible to understand’’: When I say: [something] can be understood … this is a philosophical assertion in a weakly defined sense, in that it cannot be proved or refuted. Philosophy is the epitome of unprovable and irrefutable assertions, which have been chosen from the perspective of their productiveness. They are, then, nothing but hypotheses, with the one difference that they do not offer instructions for possible experiments or observations, but rather, only enable us to understand things that we would otherwise have to encounter as completely unknown and uncanny.9
9
Ibid., p. 22.
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On this pragmatic-functional definition of the purpose of philosophy, hypotheses are not put forward so that they can be substantiated, but to let us take something completely unknown and make it better known. This definition might also explain Blumenberg’s decision to come up with his story about man’s genesis: It attempts to render the strange and unknown familiar and known. Be that as it may, the story fails to satisfy us, as the nature of the relationship between the hypothetical anthropological story, which serves to dispel unfamiliarity and ignorance, and the history of the metaphor, remains unclear. Is the latter, too, a hypothetical story proposed as an alternative to the anthropological tale, and intended to achieve the same goal? Or does the history of metaphors in general, and the cave metaphor in particular, constitute part of an anthropological story that is intended to fill a role beyond dispelling ignorance and making the strange familiar? These questions are crucial for understanding Blumenberg’s philosophical project; I will attempt to extract the answers from Blumenberg’s writings. We will first need to distinguish the justification he sets forth for the anthropological argument from that which he provides for the metaphorological argument. Only after making this distinction will it be possible to move on to the second stage of the analysis: deciphering the nature of the link between the two claims.
1 Blumenberg’s anthropological argument Man is not a created being, but was made, or made himself, into what he is through a long and complicated evolutionary process during which the necessary conditions for his survival and continued existence were generated. This is the basic premise of Blumenberg’s anthropological argument. Once we accept this premise, a direct consequence is total rejection of the claim that man has a fixed essence that was bestowed on him by the creator, whoever that may be, an essence that man does not have knowledge of, but nonetheless seeks to know. One possibility for filling this void is to arrive at an empirical account on the basis of a comparison between humans and other natural creatures. Such a comparison would make it possible to describe humans’ unique qualities without having to assume the existence of a fixed essence; these qualities, in turn, would provide an explanation of the features that distinguish humans from other creatures. Obviously, to ensure that the description of these unique human attributes does not itself become an ineffable essence, the comparison between humans and other creatures must be based on empirically measurable traits, rather than some sort of hidden inner ones. Simple observation reveals that the principal external difference between human beings and other organisms involves the extent to which their respective organs have adapted to the environment. The degree to which the organs of other animals have adapted to function well in the specific environments in which they live is very high, whereas in humans, it is conspicuously low. Put differently, humans, who are able to survive in a variety of quite different habitats, appear to lack the capacity to physically adapt themselves to the environment. This defect gives rise to a negative characterization of the human species: Man is the only animal that lacks the capacity to adapt its organs to its natural surroundings, a capacity that—were it not
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for the fact that we see that man did survive nonetheless—would appear to be necessary for survival. It is questionable whether this is indeed an accurate empirical observation about man’s distinctive traits. In any case, the crux of Blumenberg’s anthropological argument is not to be found in this description, but rather, in a foundational question that derives from it. If the key to an organism’s ability to survive is adaptation to its environment, then how has humankind managed to survive despite its inability to adapt? It turns out, then, that in the anthropological context, the motivation for abandoning the search for a fixed and immutable human essence is not only to provide an alternative account that is naturalistic and free of any metaphysical dimension, but to change the basic philosophical question. Given that human existence is a fact rather than a hypothesis, instead of the question about man’s unique nature and attributes, we should be asking about the conditions that ensured—and continue to ensure—man’s survival despite the aforementioned fundamental defect. The answer to this question can still be formulated as an account, in non-metaphysical and non-theological terms, of human uniqueness, that is, the features that distinguish humans from other living creatures. But the answer can also be formulated as an attempt to grasp the point in time when drastic changes in the environment compelled incipient man to confront these changes and find ways to contend with them. The first conception—the attempt to capture and delineate human uniqueness—is associated with Max Scheler’s anthropological approach (which continues the anthropological tradition originating with Rousseau and Herder) and even more so, with Arnold Gehlen. The second conception is identified with Blumenberg. It is important to stress that the difference between these orientations is a matter of emphasis, and Blumenberg should be seen as working within the same overall theoretical framework as Scheler and Gehlen.10 Nevertheless, we will soon see that the differences in emphasis between these thinkers’ respective approaches are critical to understanding the relation between Blumenberg’s anthropological and metaphorological theses. According to Gehlen, man is a natural creature with no congenital capacity to fully adapt to his surroundings. To compensate for this weakness, which jeopardizes his very existence, man draws on a large store of unutilized instincts that are awakened by his inability to adapt. This instinctual excess, in response to privation and non-adaptiveness, is channeled toward a single goal: reduction of the terrible strain that non-adaptiveness placed on man’s chances of continued existence, so as to improve the odds of his long-term survival. Gradually, various means of reducing the strain of non-adaptiveness emerged. According to Gehlen, the behaviors generated by the surfeit of instinctual responses to that strain constitute culture. Put differently, culture is the natural means by which man himself creates the conditions that enable him to adapt to his surroundings and thereby survive. In effect, the act of creating culture is a kind of natural creation of an environment within which man is able, through his own actions, to generate the capacity for adaptability. This adaptation through culture neither corrects a natural human defect, nor constitutes a 10 There is a broad scholarly consensus as to the proximity between Blumenberg’s philosophical anthropology and that of Scheler and Gehlen; see, e.g., Mu¨ller (2005, pp. 272–276).
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nostalgic return to a ‘pre-defectarian’ existence in a closed environment to which man was fully adapted. Culture, as a second nature, preserves, in an open and erratic environment, the same sort of existence that gave rise to the need to adapt, but equips man with a wide range of means, including symbolization, rituals, language, tools, technology, and socio-political institutions, of contending with what had formerly constituted existential threats. With the transition to culture, openness to the world, which had previously been the quintessential human frailty, became a source of the diversity, flexibility, ingenuity, dynamism and continuous transformation that characterize the cultural enterprise. Culture can be seen as a process of ongoing enhancement of what can be termed, in the wake of Blumenberg, the ‘‘art of living.’’11 This human openness to the world, which is so different from the constricted existence of other creatures, can be perceived as reinstating, in a sense, the Aristotelian definition of man as a rational animal. For far from constituting a defect, openness to the world turns out to be an advantage, enabling humans both to extricate themselves from the dictates of their circumstances, and to engage in selfreflection. It could be argued, of course, that the putative distinction between openness as a deficit and openness as an advantage is merely one of descriptive emphasis, and does not reflect any ‘real’—that is, nature-based—difference. The two ways of looking at the emergence of culture nonetheless yield radicallydifferent answers to the question, ‘What is man?’ Blumenberg’s commitment to Gehlen’s anthropological starting point, according to which man is a ‘‘creature of deficiency,’’ weak and defective, is unwavering, and is often affirmed, both explicitly and implicitly, in his writings.12 Yet Blumenberg’s robust commitment to Gehlen’s anthropological premises does not mean he is content to simply reiterate these assumptions. For though he upholds the same theoretical framework, it serves as the basis for an anthropological argument that differs from Gehlen’s. What is distinctive about Blumenberg’s account, I would argue, is that Blumenberg seeks to describe the watershed moment when a radical change rendered man unfit to survive in his surroundings. This unfitness forced him to contend with the situation, a struggle that ultimately led to the development of means to surmount his unfitness. Indeed, these means became the hallmark of human ingenuity, of man’s unique capacity to devise ways of increasing his environmental adaptation. Whereas Gehlen assumes that humans’ lack of adaptiveness is a brute fact, Blumenberg, in endeavoring to explain the emergence of adaptiveness—though we can never fully understand what brought about the transition—also seeks to shed light on the original lack of adaptiveness. In his programmatic article ‘‘An Anthropological Approach to the Contemporary Significance of Rhetoric’’ (1987) Blumenberg still accepts Gehlen’s basic premise as an elementary fact and the starting point for every anthropological discussion: ‘‘Man’s deficiency in specific dispositions for reactive behavior vis-a`-vis reality— that is, his poverty of instincts—is the starting point for the central anthropological question as to how this creature is able to exist in spite of his lack of fixed biological 11
Blumenberg (1985, p. 7).
12
E.g., in Blumenber (1987, pp. 438–439) the commitment is absolutely explicit. Elsewhere, e.g., the first chapter of Work on Myth (1985, pp. 3–30), it is also discernible, though not voiced explicitly.
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disposition.’’13 In Work on Myth, Blumenberg returned to this simple anthropological fact, this time elaborating substantially on its exposition, with a view to explaining the process that gave rise to the supposed ‘defect,’ namely, man’s apparent loss of the natural capacity for environmental adaptation.14 In the first chapter of Work on Myth, he gives a name, the ‘‘absolutism of reality,’’ to the situation confronting early man when he ‘‘came close to not having control of the conditions of his existence and, what is more important, believed that he simply lacked control of them.’’15 Blumenberg characterizes this crucial moment both from the perspective of human cognition, and in terms of what was actually taking place. From the former standpoint, he cites primordial man’s awareness that he was losing the capacity to control his fate. Blumenberg goes on to say that man ultimately ascribed this loss to a power beyond his control that had brought about man’s disempowerment. From the perspective of what was happening in the world around him, Blumenberg notes the changes that took place in man’s breeding grounds and natural habitat, inducing in man such evolutionary developments as the upright posture and walking on two feet. Most importantly, this process of evolutionary adaptation to environmental change impelled the ‘‘prehistoric creature’’ that was man to leave ‘‘the protection of a more hidden form of life, and an adapted one, in order to expose itself to the risks of the widened horizon of its perception, which were also those of its perceivability.’’16 Early man’s adoption of the upright posture deeply impacted his sense of security. Until then, our precursor’s field of vision had been quite limited, and the sudden exposure to the open horizon aroused in him a sense of anxiety of what might emerge from it. This trepidation was intensified, Blumenberg continues, when man realized that the ability to see far into the distance entailed that he himself had become visible, and other creatures might be able to see him from a distance. The evolutionary developments that led to man’s upright stance were accompanied by profound changes in the way he experienced life. Formerly a creature that felt safe and protected in its surroundings, man had become an exposed, naked, and defenseless creature that was constantly in search of a means to restore its lost sense of security. Although Blumenberg does not insist that adopting the upright posture was the sole cause of this radical transformation of how life was experienced, he does insist that the change was highly traumatic. This was man’s first experience of extreme anxiety, anxiety that was categorically different from the fear man had been accustomed to previously. This extreme anxiety, which had no specific object, was triggered by the encounter with the open horizon, which prompted vague expectations that something might happen, something against which the coping mechanisms of his former existence were no longer accessible. Formerly he had, like other animals, instinctively fled upon sensing danger. Now, no longer able to even identify what constituted a threat, he could not take measures to elude the unidentified dangers, a predicament that cast an unbearable pall of horror and 13
Blumenberg (1987, p. 439).
14
See the first two chapters of Work on Myth (1985) and the first section of Ho¨hlenausga¨nge (1989).
15
Work on Myth (1985, p. 4).
16
Ibid.
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trepidation. If he was to survive, man had no choice but to overcome the anxiety unleashed by the said evolutionary developments, and reduce it to ordinary fear. The impossibility of escaping and thereby changing his environment, at least until the danger passed, compelled man to devise some other mechanism for coping with the wide-open horizon. He would have to somehow pick up signs that could allow him to anticipate impending events and gain some inkling of the unfamiliar creatures and events that were liable to materialize. The preceding paragraphs summarize the version of the anthropological argument laid out by Blumenberg in the opening pages of Work on Myth. This account is intended to explain his claim that mythologization is a primordial symbolic activity by means of which humans have contended with the vulnerability that set in in the wake of the aforementioned changes to the biotope. To compensate for his inability to adapt naturally, primeval man harnessed his unique propensity for symbolization, for ‘‘the substitution of the familiar for the unfamiliar, of explanations for the inexplicable, of names for the unnamable.’’17 This power of substitution, applied via symbolization, has enabled man to reduce his sense of extreme helplessness, and re-gain the ability to take the measures needed to make physical survival possible. It must be stressed that the sense of existential helplessness was a mental state, not a physical condition. Although physical changes in the environment indeed brought about the situation that induced the primordial anxiety, the anxiety itself resulted from an accumulation of lesser unsettling feelings: a sense of alienation, lack of trust, a loss of orientation. So great was the resulting anxiety that it essentially paralyzed early man’s ability to act. Only by weakening this overwhelming sense of anxiety could man regain the capacity to bring about the physical conditions necessary for survival. By reducing alienation, restoring trust, and reestablishing the ability to orient oneself, the use of symbols could diminish the paralyzing effect of the existential anxiety. The most basic means by which we overcome anxiety is not information or understanding in the strict conceptual sense, but rather, the ability to tell a story, to create a myth. Something is put forward so as to make what is not present into an object of averting, conjuring up, mollifying, or power-depleting action. By means of names, the identity of such an entity is demonstrated and made approachable…. What has become identifiable by means of a name is raised out of its unfamiliarity by means of metaphor and is made accessible, in terms of its significance, by telling stories.18 Work on Myth characterizes the ability to name things and the ability to tell a story as mental tools that helped man overcome the primeval crisis. Yet this explanation may be flawed, for adducing the transition to symbolization as a means of confronting reality seems overly hasty. Is it not also plausible that man’s initial response to the loss of his natural place of shelter would have been simply to find another protective refuge? Blumenberg attempts to close this explanatory gap by 17
Ibid., p. 5.
18
Ibid., p. 7.
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further elaborating on the anthropological argument, which, as noted above, he does in the opening chapters of Ho¨hlenausga¨nge. The descriptive framework is the same as that developed in Work on Myth: Evolutionary changes in man’s physiology and natural environment force him to cope with new circumstances. However, in this version of the argument, man’s initial response is to search for a hiding place that will protect him. He finds this refuge in the cave, which restores the sense of security that was lost when he assumed the upright position and found himself facing the open horizon, exposed and defenseless. At this point in the narrative, when he begins speaking of the cave-dwellers, Blumenberg stops speaking of man in general, and formulates his description in terms of a specific group of people, namely, the families who have taken refuge in the cave. He invokes the unique dynamic between members of the group—fathers, mothers, and children—to describe the emergence of the ability to use symbols and the ability to tell a story as a means of coping with the menacing reality outside the cave. As we noted above, to continue living in the shelter of the cave, its inhabitants had no choice but to occasionally leave its confines to obtain the necessities of life: food and water. Those selected for this task were the stronger members of the group, who were capable of surviving outside the cave; the weaker inhabitants, the mothers and children, stayed in the cave. Although the latter remained protected, they nonetheless experienced a sense of uselessness and inadequacy for which they sought to devise a ‘‘compensatory mechanism.’’ Unable to take material action to ensure the group’s physical survival, they substitute acts of the imagination, creating symbols, rituals, and stories that are proffered to the strong to aid them in fulfilling their vital mission, a mission that will allow the entire group to survive. This dynamic, the division of labor among the cave dwellers, gave rise to the unique human capacity for ‘‘action at a distance,’’ the ability to use words, symbols, rituals, or stories to influence something that is not immediately present.19 This elaboration of the anthropological argument does not significantly alter its basic anthropological premise; it does introduce a social-dynamic dimension that allows for a more detailed reconstruction of the origins of symbolization. In both versions, however, the objective of symbolization remains the same: to overcome the paralyzing sense of helplessness induced by the feeling that man was unable to control the fate imposed on him by his lack of adaptation to the environment. What the cave facilitates can basically be called a … ‘‘culture of care.’’ It teaches the technique of mastering, of not grasping the immediate perception as a given: of rendering operable that which is absent, still outstanding, or imminent. In picture, in symbol, in name, and lastly, in concept, the exigencies of reality become ‘demonstrable.’20 If the underlying question of philosophical anthropology is ‘What is man?’ then Blumenberg’s answer, upheld by many other thinkers as well,21 is clear: Man differs 19
Ho¨hlenausga¨nge (1989, pp. 28–37).
20
Ibid., p. 35.
21
The most prominent being Ernst Cassirer. Blumenberg repeatedly expresses acceptance of Cassirer’s position, see, e.g., Blumenberg (1985, pp. 160–161, 167–168; and 1987, p. 438).
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from the other animals by virtue of his ability to create symbols, by virtue of the fact that he is an animal symbolicum. The expanded version of the anthropological argument endows this answer with new meaning, claiming that the ability to use symbols goes beyond symbolization for descriptive purposes. Symbols, images, words, names, metaphors, rituals, and concepts are all instruments without which humankind could not have survived.
2 The metaphorological argument22 In at least two of Blumenberg’s programmatic formulations of metaphorology’s objective, his 1960 Paradigms for a Metaphorology, and the 1979 essay ‘‘Prospect for a Theory of Nonconceptuality,’’ the rationale for the metaphorological argument is presented in a context that is conceptually independent of the anthropological discussion. In these writings, Blumenberg’s declared motivation for studying the metaphor is similar, and can be defined as the desire to demonstrate the inadequacy of conceptual discourse. Conceptual discourse, he argues, fails to provide a comprehensive explanation of the content it claims to elucidate. In making this argument, Blumenberg is not putting forward a new variant of epistemic skepticism, but rather, putting forward a new skeptical argument. This skeptical argument exposes the inadequacy manifest in conceptual discourse, which routinely adduces metaphors. The fact that figures of speech can be found in virtually all conceptual discourse, even when efforts are made to curb their use—because they are perceived as no more than linguistic ‘noise’ or mere ornamentation, and as such, of no true value to the conceptual discussion itself—attests to the fundamental limitations of conceptual discourse. To grasp the originality of this general claim as to the relationship between concept and metaphor, one must understand the theoretical context within which Blumenberg elects to frame his argument, namely, the history of philosophy. In this context, philosophy perceives and presents itself as a discipline that strives to formulate its arguments in language that is free of poorly-defined or ambiguous expressions and images. The classic and most notable declaration of this self-image is Descartes’ Discourse on Method, which makes a systematic attempt to characterize the language that will be used to formulate philosophical arguments as strictly conceptual. This pursuit of a purely-conceptual language presupposes that everything should, and can, be precisely defined. It also entails the elimination of any linguistic elements that stand in the way of these precise definitions. The fact that such elements are nonetheless present in philosophical discourse is explained away as a temporary expedient that will be abandoned when purely conceptual language has been achieved. In any event, figurative language makes absolutely no positive contribution whatsoever to the formulation of pure concepts. On the contrary, they are perceived as responsible for the delays in achieving pure 22 Blumenberg’s theory of metaphors is sui generis, which renders unfruitful the attempt to elucidate by comparing it with standard ‘conceptual’ views of metaphors. See Adams (1991, pp. 152–166). See also Haverkamp (2001, pp. 406–454).
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conceptual discourse, hence the demand that they be completely banished. Indeed, it is deemed to be one of the necessary principles of the method for generating pure concepts. From the requirement that anything perceived as temporary or superfluous be eliminated, it follows that conceptual discourse must also ‘‘relinquish any justifiable interest in researching the history of its concepts.’’23 The idea that anything that has no ongoing conceptual function is to be eliminated inasmuch as it makes no significant contribution to development of the concept in question has been the subject of much philosophical critique well before Blumenberg addressed this point. This critique is principally identified with the connection Hegel drew between historical time and the process by which concepts are formed, a seminal Hegelian idea that helped frame the nascent discipline of the history of ideas. Although at the outset of his research on the metaphor, Blumenberg viewed it as part of the larger project of broadening the meaning of the history of ideas,24 he later expressly distanced himself from this project, especially in Paradigms for a Metaphorology and even more in ‘‘Prospect for a Theory of Nonconceptuality.’’ In place of this seemingly-logical contextual niche for his metaphorological work, Blumenberg situates his work in the context of what he calls, in the wake of Vico, the ‘‘logic of fantasy.’’ Within this framework, it is more natural to claim that figures of speech in general, and metaphors in particular, have an independent status that conceptual logic cannot eliminate. Metaphors are not merely a stylistic device, not merely ornamentation, but rather, their existence enables us to understand that ideas emerge and develop within a historical context. Yet situating the discussion within the ‘‘logic of fantasy’’ enables us to view the metaphor, and indeed, metaphorology itself, as far more than merely a means of cultivating a sensitivity to the historical nature of the ‘‘logic of concepts’’ and as such not really distinct from the discourse of the history of ideas. On the contrary, since it is much more than a means of cultivating that sensitivity, it is indeed distinct from the discourse of the history of ideas. By emphasizing the ‘‘logic of fantasy’’ context, Blumenberg is hinting that the history of ideas, too, can ultimately be taken as a variant of the ‘‘logic of concepts’’ that he seeks to depose. It is in this context, I would argue, that metaphorology’s philosophical objective is best understood. Blumenberg describes this objective as follows: Metaphors can also—hypothetically, for the time being—be foundational elements of philosophical language, ‘translations’ that resist being converted back into authenticity and logicality. If it could be shown that such translations, which would have to be called ‘absolute metaphors,’ exist, then one of the essential tasks of conceptual history (in the thus expanded sense) would be to ascertain and analyze their conceptually irredeemable expressive function.25 This forthright declaration regarding the goals of metaphorology—the chief of which is elucidation of the role and limitations of conceptual discourse—also makes 23
Blumenberg (2010, p. 2).
24
See Blumenberg (1993).
25
See Blumenberg (2010, p. 3; see also 1996).
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two other significant claims. First, that the metaphorological account is as-yet a hypothesis in need of corroboration; and second, that it is a hypothesis about philosophical language, that is, the materials it studies are the written instances of philosophical activity, viz., philosophical texts; and last, that metaphorology studies a distinct type of metaphor—‘‘absolute’’ metaphors. The first assertion appears quite straightforward: The claim that the metaphor has a specific function in philosophical discourse requires substantiation. But it is unclear how this is to be achieved. Should we undertake a series of metaphorological studies that scrutinize prodigious amounts of text from the annals of philosophical contemplation in an attempt to establish, by dint of a vast accumulation of passages, examples, and quotations, the apparent empirical necessity of metaphors in conceptual philosophical discourse? Or should we seek out external evidence that supports this conclusion, perhaps along the lines of the anthropological argument? The claim that the research focus of metaphorology is the philosophical enterprise as manifested in written documents, specifically, in philosophical works, can be viewed as either a metaphysical or a normative claim. Understood in the former sense, it postulates content that reveals itself in the course of philosophical discussion even though it cannot be associated with specific thinkers’ conscious and explicitly-stated views. In other words, philosophical discourse has a dimension that surfaces through language even when its users are unaware of it, disavow it, or attempt to repress and conceal it. Understood in the normative sense, the argument is weaker. It expresses principled opposition to restricting philosophical discourse to manifestly ‘conceptual’ notions, vocabulary, and modes of expression, and rejecting, discounting, or marginalizing other forms of linguistic expression, forms that may also offer philosophical insight. In other words, the normative argument champions linguistic pluralism in philosophy. The attempt to reduce metaphorology to the identification and analysis of ‘‘absolute’’ metaphors rather than to conceive it as an investigation of the general phenomenon of metaphors, seeks to preserve the existing hostile relationship between conceptual discourse and its recognized figures of speech, use of which many philosophers, as noted above, hope to diminish and ultimately eliminate. In effect, Blumenberg, in insisting on metaphorology as a general investigation of metaphors, creates a kind of dependence between conceptual discourse and metaphors: On his analysis, the existence of metaphors is entirely dependent on the existence of concepts, or to put it more precisely, on the ongoing failure of conceptual discourse to fulfill its mission, namely, purifying itself by eliminating figurative language. Restricting the metaphorological discussion to absolute metaphors, be they rhetorical vestiges of older linguistic strata, or expansive elucidations of terms from the conceptual discourse, inextricably binds metaphorology to conceptual activity. Blumenberg’s expansive understanding of metaphorology indicates that he is not interested in the traditional romantic dichotomy that juxtaposes unmediated experience to conceptual thought. Instead, he suggests a mutual dependence between the concept and the metaphor, a dependence exposed by the discovery of absolute metaphors.
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The ‘absolute’ in the phrase ‘‘absolute metaphor’’ functions firstly and mainly to delimit and distinguish a group of unique metaphors that show resistance to and survive persistent attempts of conceptual discourse to eliminate them. To this negative meaning, that actually functions as a sort of genealogical definition of absolute metaphor, Blumenberg adds a positive aspect: Metaphors are absolute because they serve, as noted above, as the ‘‘foundational elements of philosophical language,’’ that is, they function as the ultimate source for conceptuality itself. What appeared as ‘‘leftover elements,’’ which survive the conceptual procedure and become candidates for absolute metaphors, in the negative sense, are playing now the role of being the pre-condition for the very possibility of conceptualization. In playing that role those metaphors are considered absolute not because they designate some specific content or refer to a specific reality but because they are functions: They are ‘‘catalytic spheres from which the universe of concepts continually renews itself, without thereby converting and exhausting this founding reserve.’’26 Ironically, conceptual discourse itself brings to light the metaphors that it carries within. But once their resilience is brought to light, the function of absolute metaphors changes; metaphors become, as noted, a ‘‘catalytic sphere from which the universe of concepts continually renews itself.’’ This insistence on the reciprocal dependence of concept and metaphor, which is highlighted by the notion of absolute metaphors, allows Blumenberg to argue that the connection between the two has been reversed, and that which once was considered a hindrance is now perceived, by those who accept the Blumenbergian view, as offering us insight into our reasons for formulating concepts. Blumenberg’s conscious effort to distinguish metaphorology from theoretical positions of an anti-conceptual, even irrational-romantic stripe, has sharpened our understanding of it by adding two important elements to its initial definition. These features are the metaphor’s historicality and pragmatic function. The need for these additions arises due to the enduring resonance of the Romantic ideal of expressing that which, in principle, resists expression. This ideal echoes in the characterization of metaphors as ‘‘absolute,’’ and all the more so in the fact that, as a source of insight into conceptual activity, the imaginative faculty is deemed to take precedence over the intellectual. Blumenberg is able to weaken the resonance of the anti-rational ideal by explicating the adjective ‘‘absolute’’ that he appends to the word ‘‘metaphor.’’ It is not to be understood as referring to fixed or immutable content, but to the metaphor’s tenacity and resilience in the face of incessant efforts to eliminate it. In this struggle for survival, metaphors have the ability to alter both their form and the contexts in which they appear. A metaphor’s history is constituted by this process of alteration. It is important to stress that this history should not be construed as the account of a teleological process toward some outside objective, but rather, as a means of augmenting the meaning of the concept the metaphor captures, an augmentation that is not latent in the concept itself.27 The introduction of the second added feature, the metaphor’s pragmatic function, also makes a significant contribution to grasping the full scope of the absolute 26
Blumenberg (2010, p. 4).
27
Ibid., p. 5.
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metaphor’s role, which goes far beyond deepening our understanding of conceptual discourse and demarcating its limits. For it turns out that the absolute metaphor imparts its own independent ‘‘pragmatic’’ truth. Absolute metaphors are tools that, by conferring order and structure on the world, assist us in orienting ourselves therein. As Blumenberg puts it, ‘‘By providing a point of orientation, the content of absolute metaphors determines a particular attitude or conduct; they give structure to a world, representing the non-experienceable, non-apprehensible totality of the real.’’28 Does the absolute metaphor’s pragmatic function bridge the gap, or the apparent gap, between the anthropological and metaphorological theses? Has what was initially described as metaphorology’s primary objective—elucidation of the role and limitations of conceptual discourse—been rendered superfluous? And has metaphorology been completely assimilated into the broader framework of the anthropological argument as yet another example, albeit a unique one, of how man contends with the fact that he is a ‘‘creature of deficiency,’’ weak and defective? In principle, these questions should be answered in the affirmative. As soon as the absolute metaphor’s pragmatic function becomes the dominant means of deepening our grasp of concepts in general, its original mandate becomes redundant, at least in a certain sense. For the pragmatic dimension blurs the distinction between concept and metaphor, inasmuch as, from the standpoint of the anthropological argument, they now fulfill the same function. The concept and the metaphor, along with the myth, become means used by early man to overcome his lack of natural environmental adaptiveness. In formulating his answer to the foundational anthropological question of how man manages to survive despite his inability to adapt naturally, Blumenberg clearly and unequivocally explains what it is about the metaphor and other rhetorical devices that renders the anthropological argument applicable to them: ‘‘The answer can be reduced to the formula: by not dealing with this reality directly. The human relation to reality is indirect, circumstantial, delayed, selective and above all metaphorical.’’29 But adducing figurative language as an answer to the foundational anthropological question does not entail that Blumenberg has renounced the metaphorological approach. Although a new role has been ascribed to the metaphor, examination of the relationship between concept and metaphor, conceptuality and non-conceptuality, remains the central focus of metaphorology. The claim that the anthropological turn entailed a new role for metaphors implies that even from the perspective of their original (non-pragmatic) function, metaphors were a precondition for the plausibility of the anthropological argument. Taking the absolute metaphor to provide sustained historical evidence that concepts were limited in their ability to anchor themselves gives rise to the possibility of providing an explanation for the emergence of concepts in non-conceptual terms. Absolute metaphors’ resilience in the face of the unceasing efforts of conceptual discourse to render them obsolete attests to the plausibility of the anthropological argument. In this respect, metaphorological investigations, which constitute sustained evidence that 28
Ibid., p. 14.
29
Blumenberg (1989, p. 439).
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conceptual discourse has failed to root out figures of speech, vindicate the anthropological turn. Their chief contribution, however, is in validating the anthropological argument. For the anthropological argument can be established independently of the metaphorological argument, by adducing the best available empirical and scientific knowledge about man (as Gehlen’s philosophical anthropology indeed does). Blumenberg, however, seeks to argue that the justification for the adoption of anthropological reasoning is latent within the conceptual philosophical enterprise itself. The history of philosophical discourse reveals a persistent effort to conceal and expunge its metaphoric, non-conceptual component. That is, in addition to clarifying the nature and limits of conceptual discourse, metaphorology also reveals that which conceptual discourse deplores and seeks to repress, namely, the fact that the content of metaphorology is actually the anthropological claim. Metaphorology thus entails a process of critically exposing, and surmounting, the facet of the history of philosophy that Blumenberg refers to as the ‘‘philosophy’s anthropologyphobia.’’30 But this critique, which, inasmuch as it attests to the limitations of conceptual discourse, opens up the possibility of recourse to anthropological reasoning, is not metaphorology’s sole mandate. Metaphorology also plays a positive role: It records and preserves the primordial memory of the circumstances that impelled humankind to conceptualize in the first place. And it is precisely this archival function, so to speak, that allows metaphorology to attest to the inadequacy of conceptual discourse, since reconstruction of the origins of conceptualization leads us back to the anthropological argument. We do not ask what concepts are, but rather, the more basic question of why humans created concepts in the first place. Blumenberg describes this objective of metaphorology in the opening lines of ‘‘Prospect for a Theory of Nonconceptuality’’: Metaphorics … is no longer directed mainly toward the constitution of conceptuality but back toward the connections with the life-world as the constant motivating support (though one that cannot be constantly kept in view) of all theory. Although we must already understand that we cannot expect the truth from science, we would like at least to know why we wanted to know what we now find ourselves disappointed in knowing. In this sense, metaphors are fossils that indicate an archaic stratum of the trial of theoretical curiosity—a stratum that is not rendered anachronistic just because there is no way back to the fullness of its stimulations and expectations of truth.31 This article opened by questioning the connection between the anthropological and metaphorological dimensions of Blumenberg’s philosophy. As we have seen, a fresh look at the last work published during his lifetime, Ho¨hlenausga¨nge, can put to rest many of the doubts in this regard, since toward the end of his career Blumenberg sought to integrate these two foundational arguments.
30
Blumenberg (2002, pp. 132, 179).
31
Blumenberg (1996, pp. 81–82; see also 2002, pp. 1–30).
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References Adams, David. 1991. Metaphors for mankind: The development of Hans Blumenberg’s anthropological metaphorology. Journal of the History of Ideas 52: 152–166. Betzler, Monika. 1995. Formen der Wirklichkeitsbewa¨ltigung. Zeitschrift fu¨r philosophische Forschung 49: 456–471. Blumenberg, Hans. 1985. Work on myth. Trans. Robert M. Wallace. Cambridge: MIT Press. Blumenberg, Hans. 1987. An anthropological approach to the contemporary significance of rhetoric. In After philosophy: End or transformation? ed. Kenneth Baynes, et al. Cambridge: MIT Press. Blumenberg, Hans. 1989. Ho¨hlenausga¨nge. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt a.M. Blumenberg, Hans. 1993. Light as a metaphor for truth: At the preliminary stage of philosophical concept formation. In Modernity and the hegemony of vision, ed. D.M. Levin, 30–86. Berkeley: University of California Press. Blumenberg, Hans. 1996. Prospect for a theory of nonconceptuality. In Shipwreck with spectator, 81–102. Cambridge: MIT Press. Blumenberg, Hans. 2001. A¨sthetische und metaphorologische Schriften. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt a.M. Blumenberg, Hans. 2002. Zu den Sachen und zuru¨ck, aus dem nachlass. Edited by Manfred Sommer. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Blumenberg, Hans. 2006. Beschreibung des Menschen, aus dem nachlass. Edited by Manfred Sommer. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Blumenberg, Hans. 2010. Paradigms for a metaphorology. Trans. Robert Savage. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Haverkamp, Anselm. 2001. Die Technik der Rhetorik: Blumenbergs Projekt. In Blumenberg 2001. Husserl, Edmund. 1941. Pha¨nomenologie und Anthropologie. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 2: 1–14. Konersmann, Ralf. 1999. Vernunftarbeit. In Die Kunst des Uberlebens, ed. F. J. Wetz & H. Timm, 121–141. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Mu¨ller, Oliver. 2005. Sorge um die Vernunft: Hans Blumenbergs pha¨nomenologische Anthropologie. Paderborn: Mentis. Scheler, Max. 1928. Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos. Darmstadt: Reichl. Translated into English as The human place in the cosmos, by Manfred S. Frings. Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press, 2009. Schuhmann, K. 1977. Husserl-Chronik: Denk- und Lebensweg Edmund Husserls. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Stoellger, Philipp. 2000. Metapher und Lebenswelt. Tu¨bingen: Mohr Siebeck.
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