Paradigms for a Metaphorology

Translator’s Afterword

Translator’s Afterword Metaphorology: A Beginner’s Guide Paradigms for a Metaphorology was first published in 1960 in the Archive for the History of Concepts (Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte), simultaneously appearing in book form with the Bouvier Verlag in Bonn.1 At the time, Hans Blumenberg (1920– 1996) was known to the philosophically interested public only as the author of a half dozen or so articles scattered in various journals and reference works, one of which—“Light as a Metaphor of Truth” (1957)2 —deserves to be mentioned as a preliminary study, or “proto-paradigm,”3 for Paradigms. His biography to that point may be sketched in a few strokes. Persecuted by the Nazis as a “half Jew,” prevented from enrolling at a state university, and interned in a labor camp during the war, Blumenberg escaped to his hometown of Lübeck, where he found refuge with the family of his future wife. Upon resuming his studies at war’s end, he 1. Hans Blumenberg, “Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie,” Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 6 (1960): 7–142; Blumenberg, Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1960). 2. Hans Blumenberg, “Light as a Metaphor of Truth,” trans. Joel Anderson, in Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, ed. David Levin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 30–62. 3. Anselm Haverkamp, “Die Technik der Rhetorik: Blumenbergs Projekt,” in Hans Blumenberg, Ästhetische und Metaphorologische Schriften, ed. A. Haverkamp (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001), 446. 134 Translator’s Afterword seemed determined to make up for lost time, writing his doctoral and postdoctoral dissertations at great speed. By 1950, he had satisfied all the formal requirements for embarking on an academic career. In retrospect, the relatively quiet decade that ensued can be seen as a period of gestation that issued not just in Paradigms, but equally in the hefty tomes that appeared in steady succession from the mid1960s on, occasionally supplemented by slimmer volumes. Three of those books, in particular—The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (1966), The Genesis of the Copernican World (1975), and Work on Myth (1979)—established Blumenberg’s reputation as one of Germany’s most erudite and original thinkers, and they remain, alongside Shipwreck with Spectator, his only titles to have previously appeared in English translation.4 Paradigms, then, was merely the “first vintage” (to borrow a Baconian metaphor cited in that work) in a series that seemed to grow more full-bodied and sophisticated with each new release. Like most first vintages, it is robust, crisp to the point of acerbity, and ought not to be consumed too quickly if one wants to avoid coming away from it with a buzzing head. In contrast to the expansive style of argumentation and lofty architecture characteristic of the works that were to come, its diction seems checked, almost constrained, as if Blumenberg had tried to cram into its pages everything he would later elaborate at leisure and at far greater length; thus, excurses on the book of nature, on the parable of the cave, and on the metaphor of the ship at high seas would each mature into a monograph in its own right.5 Paradigms may accordingly be read as a kind of beginner’s guide to Blumenberg, a programmatic introduction to his vast and multifaceted oeuvre, and it is primarily for this reason that I have chosen to make it available to an anglophone audience. Its very brevity—not a virtue usually associated with this author—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. In keeping with the generic requirements of a beginner’s guide, 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, under the general heading of “nonconceptuality” (Unbegrifflichkeit), 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.” This, too, justifies its translation into English. 4. All three works were translated in the 1980s by the admirable Robert M. Wallace: The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983); The Genesis of the Copernican World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987); Work on Myth (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985...