On the Metaphor of ‘Light’ in the Zoroastrian, especially Old Avestan and Younger Avestan Literature: A Critique of Hans Blumenberg’s Metaphorological Essay on ‘Light’ from the Perspective of an Iranist

In his project of a ‘metaphorology’, a history of philosophy based on analyses of metaphors, Hans Blumenberg developed the concept of the ‘absolute metaphor’. Absolute metaphors differ from ordinary metaphors in that they are not, as it were, provisional concepts, that they cannot be transformed into concepts. Rather, absolute metaphors enter into a completing relationship with the concepts to which they refer. This redefinition of the logical relationship between metaphor and concept is of great importance from a cultural-historical perspective because it calls for a reformulation of simple linear models of development (‘from myth to logos’, ‘from the metaphorical to the conceptual’). Nevertheless, Blumenberg’s cultural-historical reconstruction places itself in the tradition established by Hegel of making a sharp distinction between Asian history and Greek/European history: for the complementarity of philosophical concept and absolute metaphor asserted by Blumenberg leads to a linking of the history of absolute metaphors to the history of philosophical concepts, which for Blumenberg reaches as far as Parmenides, but not as far as Asia. This contribution poses two questions in this regard: (a) whether this logical linkage is necessary—in other words: is a metaphor ‘light’ as an absolute metaphor ‘light’ only possible if a non-dualistic concept of being and truth is conceived—and whether this linkage is carried out consistently at all in Blumenberg’s work; (b) whether Blumenberg’s historical analysis is correct at all. Both questions are answered negatively. On this basis, the contribution attempts to show: (a) that the European history of philosophical concept and of metaphor can be integrated into an older tradition of thought, a tradition which is not adequately described by the term ‘dualism’; (b) that we can observe developments of a metaphor (or ‘absolute metaphor’) ‘light’ in Ancient Iran, which presumably have to do with profound changes both in the concepts of being and truth, as well as with the form of representation of these very concepts from the Older to the Younger Avesta. Beyond the analysis of the Avestan texts, a first outlook on the late antique Zoroastrian tradition is given.