The unity of the world

Arendt and Blumenberg on the anthropology of metaphor

Hannes Bajohr

pp. 42-59

in: Germanic Review 90 (1), 2015.

Abstract

Hannah Arendt and Hans Blumenberg are usually only considered as intellectual opponents on the topic of secularization. This article shows that despite obvious differences, not least on Arendt's interpretation of Eichmann, a much more substantial connection obtains between them in their approach to metaphor. A shared critique of Heidegger led them to arrive independently at a “negative anthropology,” which rejects the idea of human essence and replaces it with a functional (Blumenberg) or conditional (Arendt) view of the human. Both took this negative anthropology as a point of departure for their theories of metaphor. This article analyzes the workings of both their versions and shows that even though Blumenberg's metaphorology, drawing on Kant, Gehlen, and Husserl, might have been more sophisticated, it is, in fact, Arendt's theory of metaphor that highlights a corporeal vacancy in Blumenberg's.

Cited authors

Arendt Hannah

Blumenberg Hans