Paradigms for a Metaphorology

Blumenberg, Hans, Savage, Robert

Published by Cornell University Press

Blumenberg, Hans & Savage, Robert.

Paradigms for a Metaphorology.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010.
Project MUSE., https://muse.jhu.edu/.

For additional information about this book

https://muse.jhu.edu/book/26601

Access provided by University Of Rhode Island (14 Dec 2018 11:48 GMT)
 VII

Myth and Metaphorics

If we attempt now to elaborate and set out a typology of metaphor histories with the
help of paradigms, this does not imply that the thematic goal and ideal of the met-
aphorology we have in mind would consist in such a typology. In carrying out this
task, we should recall that metaphorology—as a subbranch of conceptual history,
and like the latter itself considered as a whole—must always be an auxiliary dis-
cipline to philosophy as it seeks to understand itself from its history and to bring
that history to living presence. Our typology of metaphor histories must accord-
ingly endeavor to distinguish and work through particular aspects—new aspects,
perhaps—of philosophy’s historical self-understanding. In the process, it is above
all the transitions that will allow the specificity of each metaphor and its expressive
forms to appear in sharper focus.
One such phenomenon of ‘transition’ arises from the relationship between myth
and metaphorics. From this perspective, the ‘myths’ of Plato by no means prove to
be homogeneous means of expression; we can see also that the schema that pos-
its a dualism of mythos and logos, or a transition from one to the other, fails to
grasp their functional differences in an adequate fashion.1 The allegorical exegesis

1. [This will be a major theme of Hans Blumenberg, Work on Myth, trans. Robert M. Wallace (Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985).]
78    Paradigms for a Metaphorology

of myth, as practiced first by the Sophists and then, above all, by the Stoics, took
mythos to be a ‘preliminary form’ of logos, grasping it as an essentially convert-
ible utterance. This schema has its correlate in an interpretation of myth that still
holds sway today. Myth is regarded as a ‘prelogical’ phenomenon and assigned to a
primitive form of mental ‘development’ that has been superseded and supplanted
by more exact forms of understanding. But what has emerged from our reflections
under the heading of ‘absolute metaphor’ has, in its indissoluble alogicality, given
us reason to believe that such Cartesianism avant la lettre brings an inappropriate
norm to the historical findings. In myth, too, questions are kept alive that refuse
to yield to theoretical answers without thereby becoming obsolete. The difference
between myth and ‘absolute metaphor’ would here be a purely genetic one: myth
bears the sanction of its primordial, unfathomable origin, its divine or inspirative
ordination, whereas metaphor can present itself as a figment of the imagination,
needing only to disclose a possibility of understanding in order for it to establish its
credentials. The Platonic Socrates qualifies the myth of the judgment of the dead
in the “Gorgias” by asserting that what Callicles will regard as a “fable” (muthos),
he himself holds to be an “actual account” (logos).2 This myth arises in the dialogue
from a deep sense of discomfort concerning the need to find an answer to the ques-
tion of final justice. Socrates has tried, using all the argumentative means at his
disposal, to cling to the idea of a justice immanent to history. All too often, the
Athenian polis has condemned its finest men and so committed what appears to be
a gross injustice; but Socrates dares to claim that here a crucial dereliction of duty
has come back to haunt the statesman, his failure to improve the citizens under his
rule to such an extent that they would no longer be capable of unjustly condemn-
ing so excellent a statesman as himself—just as the Sophists, when cheated by their
students of their fees, were confronted with proof of the hollowness of their own
moral teachings. Yet had not Socrates earlier been unable to respond to Callicles’
prophetic suggestion that he might one day be unjustly tried and found guilty by
the polis (486AB)? The philosopher may well stand up for the truth, but the truth
does not stand up for him: it would therefore not be at all surprising should he
one day be forced to lay down his life for it (521D). It should not be forgotten that,
for both the author and the reader of the “Gorgias,” this aporia had already been
realized in the death of Socrates. That is reflected in the conversational situation:
the last judgment myth arises as the ‘final word’ from an unshakable postulate, a
deep-seated confidence that the skillfulness of the Sophists and the haplessness of
the philosophers before the court of the polis cannot represent the final allocation of
roles but will be reversed before a higher tribunal. The myth stands ready to assure
us of this; but what confidence would it merit were it not grounded in the need of
one who was prepared to die for the truth? Mythos is not logos, nor does Socrates

2. [Plato, Gorgias, trans. W. R. M. Lamb (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 519.]
 Myth and Metaphorics    79

ignore the differences between the two; we would be in a position to disparage

myth, he says, if only we could find what we are looking for, the better and more
truthful discourse for which we would gladly relinquish it (527A). The thinker’s
situation in relation to myth coincides here with his situation in relation to ‘absolute
metaphor’: it fails to satisfy his requirements, yet for want of an alternative it will
have to do.
The myth of the cave from book VII of the “Republic” is situated in another
region of the ‘twilight zone’ between mythos and logos. The cave as the setting
of a primordial event is grounded in the mythic tradition and authorized by that
tradition.3 For Plato himself, the exodus from subterranean darkness ‘into the
light’ is the elemental process of human history. This can already be seen in the
Prometheus myth of the “Protagoras” (321C), where the transition from earth to
light is connected with the gift of “wisdom in the arts together with fire,” hence
an endowment that goes beyond the form of existence ‘foreseen’ for mankind.4 In
the cosmological myth of the “Phaedo,” too (108 sqq.), man ‘naturally’ finds him-
self plunged in cavernous gloom, languishing in a dreary confinement from which
only the transcendent gift of mathematical and astronomical speculation can re-
lease him. The formal ground plan of the cave myth, upon which an escape route of
human self-fulfillment, indeed self-transcendence, has been overlaid, is thus rooted
in a primeval mythic vision while at the same time having the function of an ab-
solute metaphor. But the ‘interior design’ of the cave, the properties with which it
has been fitted out, shows that very different specific tasks can be transferred to this
instrument: the myth functions as a model. Such a model can even inform the expo-
sition of what, at first glance, may appear to be completely unrelated ideas. Plato’s
portrayal of his antihero in the “Sophist” betrays clear links to the cave scenario:5 he
is the one who, having taken refuge in the concealing darkness of the nonexistent,
now imitates the existent in images devoid of being, the machinator of the shadow-
play apparatus, the conjurer seeking to beguile his audience with mere semblance.6
The cave first ‘explains’ the possibility of a phenomenon like the Sophist. What we
have called ‘background metaphorics’, the implied use of a metaphor, is here once
more in evidence. It was not until Neoplatonism that this myth was fully taken as
an ‘absolute metaphor’, in part drawing on Empedocles and Plato, in part on the
nymph grotto in Homer, which had advanced to cosmic significance in Homeric

3. Traces in Empedocles (Diels B 120) and Pherecydes of Syros (Diels B 6). The cosmos-cave met-
aphor in Plotinus, Enn. IV 8, I, 5 refers explicitly to Empedocles, as does Porphyry, De antro nymph. 8.
Erwin Rohde had already defended the adequacy of this Empedocles interpretation against Wilamow-
itz. Cf. now R. Harder’s commentary on Plotinus 1b (Hamburg, 1956), 445.
4. ἐξιέναι ἐκ γῆς εἰς φῶς [Plato, Protagoras, trans. W. R. M. Lamb (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2006), 133. See also Hans Blumenberg, Höhlenausgänge (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1989).]
5. A view shared by F. M. Cornford in his “Sophist” commentary, in “Plato’s Theory of Knowl-
edge,” 195.
6. The interpretation collocates Soph. 233C–235A with 254A.
80    Paradigms for a Metaphorology

allegoresis, as Porphyry’s treatise “De antro nympharum” [On the Cave of the
Nymphs] demonstrates. Now the cosmos is a ‘cave’, cut off from a realm of sheer
transcendence that can no longer be reached by paideutic means. The absolute met-
aphor had been materialized in the ‘architecture’ of cultic lore.7 The church fathers
and Gnostics reappropriated it as the site of the soteriological event, which breaks
in upon creation as a ‘light in the cave’. In each case, the cave metaphor expresses
and explicates a particular feeling about the world.
A different quality again comes to expression in the myth of the demiurge in
the “Timaeus.” Here everything pivots on the explanatory function (as Plotinus al-
ready noted, Enn. IV 8, 4), an ad-hoc construction dressed up in the stylistic garb of
myth. Individual qualities of the demiurge, his ‘goodness’ for example, serve only
as premises from which the required theoretical propositions, such as the complete-
ness of the transposition of the ideal cosmos into the real cosmos, may be derived.
In essence, the myth is here nothing more than the model for the exposition of a
cosmogonic ‘hypothesis’. No specific differences can be adduced when one com-
pares this fictitious myth with the cosmological model outlined by Descartes in the
“Principia” (III, 43 sqq.). In both cases, the dynamic model is called on to explain
the static condition of the universe; what matters is that the universe might have
arisen in this way, so that Descartes—in contradistinction to Plato—can even insist
that it did not arise in this way, something he need not have written simply to keep
the Inquisition at bay. Stoic exegesis first transformed the “Timaeus” into the hal-
lowed ur-myth that it stylistically purports to be, while the patristic technique of
inversion claimed the myth’s descent from the story of Genesis. That left Augustine
with the problem, given added urgency by Gnosticism, of squaring the biblical ac-
count of creation through the divine mouth with demiurgic creation through the
divine hand. These were two distinct metaphors of origin: whereas the word of
command neither explains nor seeks to explain anything, disdaining rationality
and compelling submission, the step-by-step constructive labor of the demiurge
seeks to explain everything, to dispel the mystery of what exists by granting in-
sight into its becoming. One sees how for centuries heterogeneous elements were
distorted and constrained into a false compatibility for the sake of the ‘summation’
of the traditional authorities. Examining such heterogeneities with an eye to the
founding metaphors helps bring out their shades of difference.

7. F. Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker (Leipzig, 1836), 1: 246–47 (on the scenario of
the Mithras cult): “According to Eubulos, Zoroaster had set up such a Mithras cave as a depiction of the
universe. Everything in it was significant: the half-light, as the transition from darkness to light, was
symbolic, the rock was matter, and in its innermost recesses all cosmic relations and forms were repre-
sented, the zones, the fixed stars, the planets, the signs of the zodiac, the elements, etc. At the entrance
to this cosmic grotto appears Mithras . . .”