Abstract

The first part of this essay treats Eriugena's concept of theophany. Because nature is to be understood as theophany, every visible and invisible creature is a divina apparitio. The second part explains that appearing nature is the metaphor of a creative principle. Metaphor is the inner structure of nature as a process of appearance and the inner structure of our speaking about nature as metaphor. The third part infers that the recognition of nature as metaphor is based upon the thinking of appearance. To understand the cause through which every phenomenon of nature becomes a metaphor means to understand the dialectic of appearing nature: it means to understand nature as apparitio non apparentis. The fourth part concludes that in moments of beauty we recognize the nature of metaphor and nature as metaphor. Beauty is the givenness of what we think as the vivid cause of appearing nature. Its cause - and beauty fundamentally - is the self-consciousness of nature as appearance. Both nature as well as beauty are nonmetaphorical metaphors of themselves