Light as a Metaphor for Truth

This chapter assesses Hans Blumenberg's essay, “Light as a Metaphor for Truth” (1957). With this essay, Blumenberg formulated the seed of the project for which he is, at least in Germany, best known: his “metaphorology.” While metaphorology initially seemed to be an extension of conceptual history — a research project aimed at investigating the semantic changes to central concepts of philosophy — it at the same time called into question the very centrality of concepts and terminologies as the only and authentic bearers of philosophical thought. Instead, it makes the case for studying the role pre- and nonconceptual speech plays in the language of philosophy. Where traditionally theories of truth would be interpreted in terms of their propositional content or logical validity, Blumenberg's article instead looks at the metaphors with which truth is described and which operate, as he puts it in the subtitle, “At the Preliminary Stage of Concept Formation.”