This article reconstructs the development of Hans Blumenberg’s metaphorology from Licht als Metapher der Wahrheit (1957) and Paradigms for a Metaphorology (1960) to the later horizon of a ‘theory of non-conceptuality’, culminating in the posthumously published Die nackte Wahrheit (2019). It argues that Blumenberg’s later distance from Paradigms should be understood not as a rupture, but as a self-corrective reconfiguration. The metaphor of ‘naked truth’ serves as a decisive hinge: it reveals both the power and the limits of metaphorical reason, showing that metaphor and concept operate only in reciprocal tension. This tension is rooted in Blumenberg’s categories of visibility and distance, and in the practice of Nachdenklichkeit, which preserves the interval between figurative and conceptual articulation. A close reading of Die nackte Wahrheit shows that metaphor has a stratified historicity, marked by latency, recurrence, and reactivation. Metaphorology thus emerges as a theory of mediated world-orientation, in which the modern project acknowledges that truth is constituted through endless mediation rather than recovered as immediate presence.
La metaforica della nuda verità: paradossi e limiti della visibilità in Hans Blumenberg
Matteo Marcheschi
2026-01-01
Abstract
This article reconstructs the development of Hans Blumenberg’s metaphorology from Licht als Metapher der Wahrheit (1957) and Paradigms for a Metaphorology (1960) to the later horizon of a ‘theory of non-conceptuality’, culminating in the posthumously published Die nackte Wahrheit (2019). It argues that Blumenberg’s later distance from Paradigms should be understood not as a rupture, but as a self-corrective reconfiguration. The metaphor of ‘naked truth’ serves as a decisive hinge: it reveals both the power and the limits of metaphorical reason, showing that metaphor and concept operate only in reciprocal tension. This tension is rooted in Blumenberg’s categories of visibility and distance, and in the practice of Nachdenklichkeit, which preserves the interval between figurative and conceptual articulation. A close reading of Die nackte Wahrheit shows that metaphor has a stratified historicity, marked by latency, recurrence, and reactivation. Metaphorology thus emerges as a theory of mediated world-orientation, in which the modern project acknowledges that truth is constituted through endless mediation rather than recovered as immediate presence.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
