Metaphorologie
Metaphorologie
Metaphorologie
Metaphorology
Author(s): David Adams
Source: Journal of the History of Ideas , Jan. - Mar., 1991, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar.,
1991), pp. 152-166
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
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access to Journal of the History of Ideas
David Adams
152
ions.6Heidegger, d
fold modes of Bein
adjusting to the d
"The one thing" h
readiness to turn
meaning of Being.7
was that Heidegger
neo-Kantianism.
Although signs of renewed interest in the Davos debate and neo-Kantianism
suggest that Cassirer is now getting a second hearing, Blumenberg has already
completed the task of redeeming philosophical anthropology, in part by immuniz-
ing it against Heidegger's attacks. In 1974 Blumenberg received the Kuno Fischer
Prize and delivered an acceptance speech that reveals the depth of his affection
for the work of Cassirer, the prize's first recipient. He refers in the speech to
Cassirer's Substance and Function (1910) as a "work that, in my opinion, is still
not exhausted and is unjustly largely forgotten."8 This is the work where Cassirer
develops the concept of "function," arguing that the function of symbolic forms
is as important as their substance and that relations among things are as important
as the things in themselves. The concept of function has proven particularly
fruitful in Blumenberg's hands. In fact it may be his single most important
inheritance; it is an integral part of all his work, forming the basis of his diverse
achievements.
Cassirer claims that only a "will to logic" fuels the functioning of symbolic
forms.9 Blumenberg has given the concept of function more power by lifting it out
of this neo-Kantian context. He has turned Cassirer's philosophical anthropology
around so that, like Heidegger's metaphysics, it is facing back in the direction of
the terminus a quo; and this has enabled him to develop an understanding of the
temporality of Dasein that rivals Heidegger's. The parallel to Heidegger should
not be exaggerated, however. For Blumenberg the terminus a quo is inaccessible
and repulsive; the meaning of Being is found in the process of removing ourselves
from it. " 'History' means that the reasons ruling at the origin do not determine
the process of becoming and what finally comes to be," he argues, trying to
unmoor us from the terminus a quo. "Meaning is no constant in history."'0 He
6 Ibid., 264, 266. "Symbolic forms" is Cassirer's general term for all forms of culture,
all modes of consciousness. In borrowing it in this essay, I often fail to distinguish among
the wide variety of forms of expression and representation because I am focusing here on
what they have in common: their function. Metaphor, myth, rhetoric, and symbol; concept,
reason, and science; symbolic forms, civilization, systems of knowledge, and "answers":
all these perform the function of satisfying curiosity, meeting needs, responding to "ques-
tions," "occupying positions."
7Ibid., 267-68.
8 Blumenberg, "Ernst Cassirers gedenkend bei Entgegennahme des Kuno-Fischer-
Preises der Universitat Heidelberg 1974," Wirklichkeiten in denen wir leben (Stuttgart,
1981), 164.
9 Cassirer, Substance and Function, and Einstein's Theory of Relativity, tr. William
Curtis Swabey and Marie Collins Swabey (Chicago, 1923), 319.
o1 Blumenberg, "Weltbilder und Weltmodelle," Nachrichten der Giessener Hochschul-
gesellschaft, 30 (1961), 70. Delivered at the University of Giessen, this speech can be read
as an indirect commentary on Heidegger's Rector's speech.
"What is the world?" "What part does mankind have in the totality of
truth?"'2 These are examples from "Paradigms for a Metaphorology" of questions
13 Ibid., 20. For further definitions of the term see also page 9 (where "absolute" refers
to metaphor's resistance to translation into concepts, and not specifically to the issue of
totalization), page 108, and the following passage, from page 123: the absolute metaphor
gives "an orienting hold for the question, not answerable through theoretical investigation,
about the position of man in the universe of the existent."
14 Ibid., 142.
5 Ibid., 19.
16 Ibid., 10-11.
17 Ibid., 19.
18 Ibid., 84.
19 Cf. Jacques Derrida's comments on the "impossibility" of a "metaphorology of
philosophy": "If one wished to conceive and to class all the metaphorical possibilities of
philosophy, one metaphor, at least, always would remain excluded, outside the system"
("White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy," Margins of Philosophy, tr.
Alan Bass [Chicago, 1982], 219-20 and passim). On the metaphor "paradigm," see Anselm
Haverkamp, "Paradigma Metapher, Metapher Paradigma-Zur Metakinetic hermeneu-
tischer Horizonte (Blumenberg/Derrida, Kuhn/Foucault, Black/White)," Epochen-
schwelle und Epochenbewusstsein, Poetik und Hermeneutik 12, ed. Reinhart Herzog and
Reinhart Koselleck (Munich, 1987), 547-60, and also the discussion of "Observations on
Metaphors," below.
20 The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, tr. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge, Mass., 1983),
66 (translation revised based on 1966 edition). The English translation is based on the
three-volume revised edition (1974, 1973, 1976), but all of the passages I cite in this essay,
unless otherwise noted, were already present in the first edition (1966).
answer, philosoph
philosophy that lea
its predecessors and
degger scored point
quo. Addressing th
philosophical positi
ally tries to avoid c
them with the "co
An Anthropol
21 "An Anthropolog
Robert M. Wallace, A
Bohman, and Thoma
22 Legitimacy of the
23 Substance and Fu
to honor which was bound to be difficult or even impossible for any knowledge
that did not appeal, as it did, to transcendent sources.24
This passage makes it clear that the questions Christian theology placed in o
Daseinsgrund are the same ones answered by absolute metaphors. By focusin
here on forms of curiosity added relatively recently to our framework of knowl-
edge, Blumenberg's philosophical anthropology provides a partial account of the
terminus a quo and still avoids absolutes and the temptation for totalization.
Yet implicit in this analysis is the belief that mankind always possesses ques-
tions or needs of some kind which are the terminus a quo of civilization. Th
implication is explicated in "An Anthropological Approach to the Contemporary
Significance of Rhetoric" (1971). To date, Blumenberg's major work has ad
dressed other topics-the genesis of the modem age, metaphor, myth-and th
anthropological elements have remained in the background. "An Anthropologi-
cal Approach to Rhetoric" is the only work devoted to the topic of concern
us here. In it he introduces a name for the animal with the expanding an
shrinking "budget" of curiosity: the "creature of deficiency" (Mdngelwesen). Th
concept is borrowed from Arnold Gehlen and a tradition in the philosophy
language stretching back to Johann Gottfried Herder, but in the context
Blumenberg's own development it must be viewed as a descendent of the concep
of the Daseinsgrund in the "Paradigms" essay. Blumenberg sees rhetoric as t
tool of a creature who must compensate for a deficiency of meaning. Unli
animals, man lacks sufficient instincts to determine his behavior in all situation
and rhetoric helps him survive these crises.
primarily relations
concept of the Mdn
back to the termi
suggests, as a crea
himself or the wo
with symbolic form
With the developm
Mingelwesen, Blum
terminus a quo. Wo
cal anthropology. S
the phenomenon th
and metaphor. The
came close to not h
more important, be
means by which m
of what is other th
piecemeal to the o
possesses for him.
The "absolutism of
a terminus a quo t
... we are speaking
lacking in the "Par
late and a poor inv
the overcoming of
function."31 Like m
in terms of its fun
into history-and de
for all civilization,
shared by all symb
The task performe
an "absolutism of
subject."33 The con
ity" and imagination, helplessness and control, question and answer, indetermi-
nacy and plenitude of meaning-is what we call "history." To preserve th
process Blumenberg concerns himself with removal away from rather than ap-
proach toward these extremes: to stay between them one must avoid arriving a
either one.
Metaphorical Anthropology
Whatever may have been the appearance of the prehuman creature that w
induced, by an enforced or an accidental change in the environment it inhabite
to avail itself of the sensory advantage of raising itself upright into a bipe
posture and to stabilize the advantage in spite of all its internal disadvantages i
the functioning of organs-that creature had, in any case, left the protection o
a more hidden form of life, and an adapted one, in order to expose itself to th
risks of the widened horizon of its perception, which were also those of
perceivability.... [This move] was a situational leap, which made the unoccup
distant horizon into the ongoing expectation of hitherto unknown things. Wha
came about through the combination of leaving the shrinking rain forest for
savanna and settling in caves was a combination of the meeting of new require
ments for performance in obtaining food outside the living places and the
advantage of undisturbed reproduction and rearing of the next generation, wit
its prolonged need for learning, now in the protection of housing that was eas
to close off from the outside.34
34 Ibid., 4.
35 Robert A. Segal, "Blumenberg as Theorist of Myth," Annals of Scholarship, 5
(1987), 93. See also Robert Wallace, "Translator's Introduction," Work on Myth, xvi-xix.
Blumenberg may avoid describing the origin of the contents of individual myths, but he
certainly does not avoid giving "content" or "substance" to his idea of the origin of the
function of myth as a whole. The emphasis on function does not free one from the need
to deal with "contents," but makes one more conscious of how one does so, i.e., of one's
own dependence on myth.
perfect); in other
Substance and Func
proposes the use of
reality without re
knowledge, a limit
relations among th
extrapolation in th
appreciates the imp
such limit concepts
The self-consciousn
olation transform
a Metaphorology" i
realizes that "'carry
to be performed, bu
pology answers que
phors are necessar
embraces both nece
awareness of the fu
of his work, creatin
more important t
assertion.
"Observations on M
developing this se
discusses "paradigm
reference here to h
role.) The title "Obs
which contrasts w
The title also indica
observer of metaph
One object of study
of the shipwreck w
Blumenberg's inter
sion so far in Shipw
where he traces its
Daseinsmetapher ra
claim in "An Anth
tion m is potentially
own fate and Blum
history as its vario
36 Work on Myth, 3,
cal basis: the talk of
is "only a heuristic p
in quotation marks
no such
references t
subversively.
37 Substance and Function, 228-29.
38 Work on Myth, 7.
39 "Beobachtungen an Metaphern," Archiv fur Begriffsgeschichte, 15 (1971), 161-214.
and its wreck. The story arrives at Jacob Burckhardt's reflection that "we woul
like to know the waves in which we are floating, but we are these waves them-
selves."40 The final lines of Blumenberg's account ask a question that the bo
in a small way has already answered: "obviously the ocean contains other materi
than that already used in building. From where can it come, in order to giv
courage to those beginning anew? Perhaps out of earlier shipwrecks?"41 Blumen
erg has given the metaphor new life by making himself-and the reader-th
spectators of this metaphor's shipwreck. Inside and outside, subject and obje
are confused: this is a "paradigm" for a "metaphorology" practiced with a
consciousness and acceptance of the fact that metaphors not only are the objects
of analysis but also give form to the subject performing this analysis. By settin
himself adrift on the sea of metaphor, Blumenberg avoids the illusion of being
anchored to the absolute.
In the past decade Blumenberg's rate of publication of such histories of
metaphor has increased. Throughout these works there is the double movement
found in Shipwreck with Spectator: towards distance and immediacy in relation
to the metaphors. On the one hand each history of an absolute metaphor seems
to be complete, total-a rounded off object set off from the historian. On the
other hand each work emphasizes the extent to which the observer and the act
of observation are themselves metaphorical and constituted by the very metaphors
being studied. The ambiguity of the position of the author and reader of these
works and the preoccupation with the concept of the observer-whether as
Betrachter, Beobachter, Zuschauer, Anschauer, or LeserA2-indicate the self-
consciousness of Blumenberg's attempts to describe and to create his relation to
the past. How "new" is his anthropological metaphorology? Might he be strad-
dling the threshold to the next epoch, partly "inside" and partly "outside"
modem metaphors? How much can and should one attempt to influence such an
epochal transition by altering the answers and perhaps even the questions?
process of self-pres
of matching this ec
cal anthropology le
Blumenberg often
his concepts, argu
individual should b
speaks of "the elem
human," or claims t
people have ever th
to the "questions":
culture: that of the
attempts to overcom
cannot answer"-an
ing.45 Every time a
what it means to b
Thus an ecumenical
Yet the advice Cass
we lack the time t
equal life to all past
them. Self-preserv
clined person (or cu
enthusiasm, but wh
attention remains p
of history. This "p
the modem age, tra
tried to embrace th
self-conception: try
totally Other, he in
act of comparing
modem age is amb
conception of man,
simply does not ha
Christianity, and t
answers; ecumenic
question about the
So how does Blum
backing away from
sciousness of the a
that the need they
43 Blumenberg's ec
For another view of
Brindisi': Vergil in an
1986), 225-39.
44 "Ernst Cassirers gedenkend," 170 and passim; Lesbarkeit der Welt, 409.
45 "Pensiveness," tr. David Adams, Caliban, 6 (1989), 54; see also "Being-A MacGuf-
fin: How to Preserve the Desire to Think," tr. David Adams, Salmagundi (forthcoming
1991).
46 "Anthropological Approach," 456.
Queens College an
of New York.