Navigatio Vitae : Metaphor and Concept in the Work of Hans Blumenberg

Résumé 0

Through the example of the «navigatio vitae » – metaphor, the paper focuses on the relationships, in Blumenberg’s work, between the unthematized and dark « background », and the explicit and focalized dimension, the conceptual field. In this context, metaphors – specially the « absolute » ones – assume the function of orientating the thought – conveying trends which cannot cristallize in pure concepts, but which guide the attention in the confrontations with reality, acting not only in imagination, but in theory itself. The myth, too, dwells upon the level of the a-conceptual, but it has the task of re-creating a human familiarity with the world. And it is « always at work », being a first kind of rationalization of events. The paper ends with a comparaison between Blumenberg’s positions in Arbeit am Mythos and Schelling’s Philosophie der Mythologie.