Hans Blumenberg, the creator of metaphorology, was one of the most important German philosophers of the latter 20th century.
- Shipwreck with Spectator -Paradigm of a Metaphor for Existence
- The Legitimacy of the Modern Age
- The Legibility of the world (onvindbaar?)
Blumenberg’s work was of a predominantly historical nature, characterized by his great philosophical and theological learning, and by the precision and pointedness of his writing style. The early text “Paradigms for a Metaphorology” explicates the idea of ‘absolute metaphors’, by way of examples from the history of ideas and philosophy. According to Blumenberg, metaphors of this kind, such as “the naked truth”, are to be considered a fundamental aspect of philosophical discourse that cannot be replaced by concepts and reappropriated into the logicity of the ‘actual’. The distinctness and meaning of these metaphors constitute the perception of reality as a whole, a necessary prerequisite for human orientation, thought and action. The founding idea of this first text was further developed in works on the metaphors of light in theories of knowledge, of being in navigation (Shipwreck with Spectators, 1979) and the metaphors of books and reading. (The Legibility of the World, 1979)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Blumenberg
