Abstract

The text consists of two parts. Part one puts the works of Hans Blumenberg, as far as they tackle the problem of rhetoric, into their historical context. Relevant here in particular is the tradition of topological philosophies of the Renaissance and their different types of revival in the 20th century. Part two analyses three main ‘absolute metaphors’ or ‘topoi’ Hans Blumenberg has investigated, the metaphors of ‘light’, ‘shipwreck’, and ‘book of nature’, in order to add to the philosophical perspective taken by Blumenberg a hidden philological perspective, which shows the shortcomings of conceptualizing rhetorical techne (how does a metaphor work), which does not always account for philological techne (how do we write texts)