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In copertina: Angelo che annuncia l’Apocalisse (part. miniatura), Beato di Liébana, Codice di Navarra (sec. XII), Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Contributi di: Rafael Benlliure Tébar, Andrea Borsari, Manlio Della Serra, Olivier Feron, Alberto Fragio, Diego Giordano, Matías González, César González Cantón, Emanuela Mazzi, Vida Pavesich, Martina Philippi, Antonio Rivera García, José Luis Villacañas

egli ultimi anni l’interpretazione del pensiero di Hans Blumenberg [1920-1996] ha subìto rilevanti trasformazioni. Le ricerche condotte sui suoi primi lavori, la collazione di saggi, articoli e aforismi apparsi separatamente in riviste e giornali, la pubblicazione dello scambio epistolare intrattenuto con Carl Schmitt, e soprattutto la comparsa di materiale inedito appartenente al Nachlaβ, permettono oggi di guardare in maniera più completa all’incidenza e complessità della sua opera filosofica. Tali acquisizioni impongono una profonda revisione sia delle questioni classiche che di quelle riguardanti l’ermeneutica della Modernità, la polemica sulla secolarizzazione o la metaforologia. l presente volume è stato concepito con il proposito di offrire nuovi approcci all’opera di Blumenberg attraverso un’ampia varietà di prospettive, dall’antropologia filosofica all’interpretazione ontologica della retorica e del mito, dalla filosofia della storia all’astronoetica, al confronto con figure come Thomas Hobbes, Cornelius Castoriadis o Georg Simmel.

HANS BLUMENBERG | Nuovi paradigmi d’analisi

multilingual book

a cura di Alberto Fragio e Diego Giordano

Nuovi paradigmi d’analisi

HANS BLUMENBERG

Index

009

Diego Giordano Decentramento antropologico e neutralizzazione simbolica

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Alberto Fragio Das Überleben der Übergänge Nuevos paradigmas de análisis de la obra de Hans Blumenberg

Saggio introduttivo

075 José Luis Villacañas

Leviatán. Un fragmento gnóstico en la modernidad

103 César González Cantón

Absolutism: Blumenberg’s Rhetoric as Ontological Concept

143 Antonio Rivera García

Reflexiones sobre el concepto filosófico de absolutismo: retórica y mito en Blumenberg

167 Vida Pavesich

Hans Blumenberg: Philosophical Anthropology, Terror, and the Faces of Absolutism

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Manlio Della Serra L’irruzione metafisica. La logica della potenza divina nella Matthäuspassion di Hans Blumenberg 

 Index

225 Olivier Feron

Anthropologie et contingence dans la phénoménologie de H. Blumenberg

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Martina Philippi Ein Spiel mit Selbstverständlichkeit(en). Formal-inhaltliche Übergänge in Blumenbergs philosophischen Miniaturen

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Emanuela Mazzi I pensieri astronoetici come laboratorio per un’antropologia sperimentale: la riflessione di Hans Blumenberg sull’impresa spaziale

301 Matías González

Contraposiciones y diferencias. Sobre algunas posibilidades en la noción de tensión en el texto blumenberguiano

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Rafael Benlliure Tébar Creación ontológica y comprensión histórica en Hans Blumenberg y Cornelius Castoriadis. Una lectura aproximativa

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Andrea Borsari Il Simmel antropologo della Beschreibung: una noterella

César González Cantón

Absolutism: Blumenberg’s Rhetoric as Ontological Concept

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his article is devoted to show both the importance of Blumenberg’s notion of rethoric within his philosophical framework, and his particular understanding of this notion. What might merely seem a sophistical revival of the topic of rethoric turns out to be an ontological notion. In order to justify this assert, we present Blumenberg discussing Heidegger’s philosophical enterprise of taking account of human existence’s finitude. In Blumenberg’s view Heidegger did not actually accomplished his goal. The Heideggerian proposal needs to be pushed further by integrating into the ontological analysis, not only contingence but also what human beings do to avoid contingence’s awareness. These two factors give shape to human existence. This new understanding actually means to reframe ontology from an anthropological vantage point. In order to do that does Blumenberg stick to the approach developed by the philosophical anthropology arisen in the 20th century in Germany. For this reinterpretation it is key his concept of rethoric. I focuse on a comparison between Plato’s, Aristotle’s and the sophists’ notions of rethoric on the one side, and Blumenberg’s one on the other side. At this point it arises a radical confrontation between two aspects of reason, that correspond to the aforementioned double-faced structure of existence: an absolutist reason―vehicle of discovering of the contingence―, and a rethorically shaped reason―means of avoiding the counsciousness of it―guided by the so-called “principle of insufficient reason”. I also treat the role played by metaphors in the latter. Three principal outcomes emerge from these considerations. Firstly, Blumenberg loads rethorical―and, more generally, anthropological―features with “ontological weight”. Particularly 103

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significant here are the two aspects of human temporality disclosed for Blumenberg by his “correct” understanding of human finitude: the necessity of delaying and the situation of not having enough time. Secondly, both aspects have ethical consequences. Thirdly, one of the two functions of philosophy would be for Blumenberg of rethorical kind (metaphorology); Blumenberg allignes so with the contemporary “Renassaince of rethoric”.

1. Ontology as metaphorology

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t might be said that Blumenberg considers himself as a step beyond—and maybe definitive—Heidegger in the history of ontology. Most concretely, in his opinion existential analysis of Dasein must be replaced by anthropology with phenomenological characteristics, very close to that elaborated by Arnold Gehlen, Helmut Plessner, Ernst Cassirer, Erich Rothacker and Paul Alsberg, among others. Blumenberg intends to explore the contingence of human existence from a phenomenological perspective, strongly critical of Husserl and Heidegger.   J. Kopperschmidt, ed., Rhetorik, Vol. I, (Darmstadt, 1990), 1.   Factual translation mistakes in the case of German works not published in English remain my own.    This interpretation of Blumenberg’s philosophy is far from usual. We have attempted to give a more detailed argumentation in César G. Cantón, “Blumenberg versus Heidegger: la metaforología como destino de la analítica existencial”, Anuario Filosófico 38 (2005), 726.    Above all: Arnold Gehlen, Der Mensch. Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt (Frankfurt a/M: Athenäum Verlag, 1962).    Above all: Helmut Plessner, Gesammelte Schriften IV. Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch (Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp, 1981).    Ernst Cassirer, Was ist der Mensch?: Versuch einer Philosophie der menschlichen Kultur (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960).    For instance: Erich Rothacker, Probleme der Kulturanthropologie (Bonn: H. Bouvier und Co. Verlag, 1948).    Paul Alsberg, Der Menschheitsrätsel (Dresden, 1922).    Cfr. Hans Blumenberg, Die ontologische Distanz. Eine Untersuchung  

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For Blumenberg, “anthropology” is the attempt to understand human existence from itself, not having its reason in “Being”, “God” or whatsoever, such as it has supposedly been the case throughout the history of thinking. Resorting to whatever entity outside of man serves to the purpose of giving answer to the “fundamental questions” (Grundfragen)10 posed by the fact of existence, for instance, what’s the world? Where do we come from? Why are we here? Why is there something rather than nothing? What’s the sense in dying? It is not difficult to see that being able to have these answers means having the capacity for a kind of total knowledge about reality (about the world, the own existence) as a whole, which has received the name of theory. Human beings’ plenitude (happiness) is contingent on this knowledge. To state that the world has sense means for Blumenberg that it is “sending” these answers to human beings; in the experience of happiness it is perceived that reality “cares for” man. Since an infinite amount of time would, in Blumenberg’s opinion, be required to gain such a knowledge,11 to attribute sense to the reality implies that the cognoscenti live forever and always existed. In other words, the congruence between world-time and lifetime.12 The history of thinking has been full of proposals about the details of this comprehension of human beings and reality. To every one of them can be applied, Blumenberg states, the title of cosmos, whose exemplary representation was coined in the Ancient Greece by Plato.13 Not all of them stick to every element with similar radicality, but all stand on the solid ground of the über die Krisis der Phänomenologie Husserls (Kiel: 1950), 7, 12, 112. Unpublished habilitation’s work. 10   Hans Blumenberg, Beiträge zum Problem der Ursprünglichkeit der mittelalterlich-scholastischen Ontologie (Kiel, 1947), 5. Not published dissertation’s work. 11   Cfr. Hans Blumenberg, Höhlenausgänge (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), 176. 12   This is the title of one of the most famous Blumenberg’s books: Lebenszeit und Weltzeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986). 13   Cfr. Blumenberg, Die ontologische Distanz, 52.

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following statement: reality cares for human beings. Blumenberg, on the contrary, affirms the impossibility of finding out these answers. That means actually “anthropology”: reality does not take care of human beings. Positioned within a sort of “negative” platonic framework, Blumenberg considers that human beings are looking forward to taking charge of the totality of reality and of their own existence. However, that is not possible. Thus, the quest for happiness becomes rather flight of pain. It is what Blumenberg terms the “absolutism of reality (Absolutismus der Wirklichkeit)”: the same way that a person is defenseless in front of an absolutist governor, so human beings cannot “control the conditions of their own existence”.14 That means, above all, that they cannot control when they are born and when they die, because a reality with sense means people who live both since ever and forever. Reality has no sense because we die. Not being able to access to the whole of reality is the core of what Blumenberg calls historicity, finitude or contingence. This incapacity consists in that loss of world (because we are born or die “too soon”) are irreversible ones. This consideration of contingence leads straightforward to the integration of human corporality into the ontological analysis, since to be born and to die are made possible by corporality.15 Blumenberg’s position can be described as “ontological skepticism (metaphysisches Skeptizismus)” that would differ from “rational” skepticism, as it can be found in some philosophical systems before him.16 The latter certainly states our knowledge’s weakness, but continues to move along Platonic coordinates, taking for granted a basic security in our relationship to the world. The Being, may it be either spiritual or material, one way or the other, cares for human being; whilst the former declares a radical   Blumenberg, Arbeit am Mythos, 10.   Moreover, an aspect―though not the most relevant―of imperfect

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knowledge as we will see later, would be its being disturbed by strong feelings and passions, that are corporal realities 16   Cfr. Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, Robert Wallace, trans. (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1985), 218–19.

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hostility between human beings and reality. This hostility is already expressed at the human biological level. The ontological “poverty” of human beings matches their anthropological one, as apparent in the vision of human beings as animals characterized by a lack of instincts.17 An instinct can be described as an inborn configuration of animal tendencies resulting from an evolutionary specialization, which allows an automatic response triggered by specific stimuli.18 As species, human beings’ evolutionary development has followed a different and unique path. As philosophical anthropology explains, that means a huge disadvantage in respect to the other animals,19 because instincts help animals to survive by reducing environmental uncertainty.20 Thus, thanks to them an animal always knows what to do and how to do it. Not so human beings. These are, with a Herder’s term, a “creature of deficiency” (Mängelwesen),21 that has firstly to be understood as an insufficiency to deal properly with reality from a biological point of view.22 In substitution of such accurate instruments in the struggle for survival emerges in human beings rationality and, consequently, culture.23 One aspect of the ontological poverty of human beings, made possible by the lack of instincts, is their “openness” (with the term inherited from Max Scheler)24. Human nature has not a giv  It could be said that the anthropological “poverty” is the ratio cognoscendi of the ontological one, while the latter is the ratio essendi of the former. 18   Cfr. Jakob von Uexküll, Theoretische Biologie (Berlin, Gbr. Paetel: 1920), 116–17. 19   Cfr. Blumenberg, Höhlenausgänge, 811. 20   Cfr. Blumenberg, Höhlenausgänge, 812; Gehlen, Der Mensch, 21; Alsberg, 482. 21   J. G. Herder, Abhandlung über der Ursprung der Sprache (Berlin, 1772). 22   Cfr. Gehlen, Der Mensch, 99–100; Alsberg, 99. 23   Cfr. Gehlen, Der Mensch, 38; Alsberg, 44. 24   “Offenheit”: Max Scheler, “Vom Wesen der Philosophie und der moralischen Bedingung des philosophischen Erkennens”, Vom Ewigen im Menschen, Gesammelte Werke vol. 5 (Bern 1954). 17

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en goal, it is comprised mainly of possibilities rather than facts. Man is a “being of possibilities” (Möglichkeitswesen),25 burdened with the task of “creating” himself and its destiny. Up to here, what finitude means for human existence. Yet the novelty of Blumenberg’s proposal is not only to help see this question in a different light, but of putting it together with the idea that human beings are always trying to skip it. With Blumenberg, we are not allowed to take seriously the idea of cosmos as real but, on the other hand, we cannot live without it. As human beings we need the presence of sense in our lives. Heidegger claimed to be able to confront contingency without lenitive factors because his understanding of it was cosmistic deep down.26 Precisely because Blumenberg claims the radical finitude of human beings, he must acknowledge the heavy-weighted role that the idea of cosmos plays in human life. Human existence consists then of a dialectical movement between two equally dominating ontological poles: the consciousness of contingence (Inständigkeit) and the attempt to silence it (Gegenständigkeit),27 that is, to live “as though” (als ob)28 the world had sense, i.e., we were immortals. Both mankind and personal history swift, like a pendulum, between these two poles.29   Blumenberg, Vollzähligkeit, 212.   Blumenberg comes up with the idea that every thinker before him–

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Heidegger included–has been so to say “cosmistic”, as they have refused to accept that we cannot have all of the world and existence. This argument can seem difficult to admit at first sight, but Blumenberg’s philosophical efforts are to a great extent intended to uncover the presence of “cosmistic” elements in the thinkers before him. 27   Cfr. Blumenberg, Die ontologische Distanz, 201. 28   Hans Blumenberg, “An Anthropological Approach to the Contemporary Significance of Rhetoric” in After Philosophy? End or Transformation, Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman, and Thomas McCarthy, eds., Robert M. Wallace, trans. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1987), 450. 29   In this way does Blumenberg reinterpret the heideggerian “ontological movement” (ontologische Bewegung) (Die ontologische Distanz, 201; cfr. Sein und Zeit, Max Niemeyer, ed., Halle5 1941, §40, 189.). Cfr. also Blumenberg, Höhlenausgänge, 799; Die Vollzähligkeit der Sterne (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), 360. A good introduction to this point can be found in Ulrich

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Human beings can conceal contingence in various ways. Through the invention of tools and artifacts that help them overcome their biological deficiency, and in general through the context of sense provided by culture30. This sense needs to be individually appropriated in the form of a “self-understanding” (Selbstverständnis)31. Therefore, if cosmos means to live in a comprehensive knowledge of the world and of one’s own position in it, cosmos and self-understanding overlap to a great extent. Blumenberg attributes consequently a double functionality to rationality in human beings. On the one side, reason has an inherent inclination to reveal the finite nature of existence, which can be expressed as follows: there’s no reason for existence… This is the way in which Blumenberg understands the “absolutist reason” highlighted by our time. Blumenberg calls the output of this reason truth. On the other hand, reason leans similarly towards covering it. It is the logic of life, which pursues its “own preservation” (Selbsterhaltung)32 above all: … but I exist. This reason is seen by Blumenberg as rhetorically shaped. Its product is sense. From the point of view of each type of reason, the opposite pole suffers from irrationality. Each one of both reason’s aspects can take the form of mythical, scientific or philosophical knowledge. Thus, the opposition between the two different aspects of reason is not contingent on which concrete form it takes (mythos, science, philosophical reflection), but on the function it develops, i.e., to uncover or to Dierse, “Hans Blumenberg: Die Zweideutigkeit des Menschen”, Reports on Philosophy 15 (1995), 121–129. 30   Cfr. Blumenberg, “Approach”, 438. 31   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 441. 32   Hans Blumenberg, “Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie”, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 6 (1960), 108–9. Taking into account what it has been said so far, it is clear that the notion of self-preservation extends to biology, personal life and history of civilizations. Cfr. also: Hans Ebeling, “Einleitung: Das neuere Prinzip der Selbsterhaltung und seine Bedeutung für die Theorie der Subjektivität”, in Subjektivität und Selbsterhaltung. Beiträge zur Diagnose der Moderne, Suhrkamp 1976, 10.

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cover human existence’s finitude. As we will see, rhetorical reason’s main instrument for the accomplishment of this goal is metaphor, considered as means of self-expression and world understanding. Phenomenological anthropology is finally understood as historical revision of metaphors: metaphorology. It plays the roles of both uncovering the contingence of human existence by making clear the relativity of each metaphor; and helping avoid this knowledge by telling “a story” about us and our relation to reality which “makes sense”, i.e., which makes the impression that we know something about the Being. Therefore is Blumenberg’s philosophy, like human existence and History themselves, both Inständigkeit and Gegenständigkeit.

2. Plato’s and Aristotle’s accounts for rhetoric

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s we have just seen, Blumenberg wants to grant ontological weight to the human activity of creating cosmos. As we will see in a moment, by calling this activity rhetoric Blumenberg introduces anthropological themes at the very beginning of the history of thinking: in the well-known discussion between Plato and the sophists, that is one about the relation between words and things,33 that is, about the very possibility of ontology. As we mentioned before, it is appropriate to locate Blumenberg’s attempt in the context of the so-called “Renaissance of rhetoric”,34 where rhetoric is becoming, at the end of XX century, a new universal paradigm for every discipline, natural sci-

  Cfr. Hans Blumenberg, “Individuation und Individualität”, in: Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart III (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 31959), 718. 34   J. Kopperschmidt, in J. Kopperschmidt, ed., Rhetorik, Vol. I, (Darmstadt, 1990), 1. 33

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ences and philosophy alike.35 While for Plato and Aristotle rhetoric is limited to persuasion in matters of justice,36 Blumenberg understands it as penetrating every human theoretical or practical activity in order to introduce sense in the world, i.e., to generate a cosmos. In the light of Blumenberg, the secondary role played by rhetoric in both Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophical systems derives from the fact that access to Being is by them taken for granted. Beyond the important differences between these two authors in their respective ideas about rhetoric, Blumenberg considers that their common “cosmistical” approach permits him to keep them in view together. The possibility of relation to the Being and, therefore, of a global knowledge, allows Plato and Aristotle to discriminate between essences’ true knowledge (science) and appearances’ imperfect knowledge (opinion). The former emerges from understanding of causes, while the latter is properly related to belief. Plato holds rhetoric to be in the ambit of “belief (πιστευτικη̂ς)”.37 This would not be negative at all under the condition that rhetoric stayed within its limits. But the sophist claims rhetoric to be the most perfect kind of knowledge. In this way, according to Plato, a sophist leads people to confuse justice with the appearance of justice, the same way that cookery fakes medicine, sophistry pol  For instance: S. Ijsseling, Rhetorik und Philosophie. Eine historischsystematische Einführung (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1988); A.G. Gross, The Rhetoric of Science (Massachusets: Cambridge, 1990). 36   Cfr. Gorgias 454b, in Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 3, W.R.M. Lamb, trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd. 1967). Vid. Sophist 233c 5, in Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 12, Harold N. Fowler, trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1921); Rhetoric 1355a 21–24 fw., in Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 22, J. H. Freese, trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1926). Greek versions: Plato. Platonis Opera, John Burnet, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903); Ars Rhetorica. Aristotle, W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959). 37   Gorgias 455a 1–2, where Plato says rhetoric “is a sort of knowledge based upon mere opinion” (δοξαστικἠν ἄρα τινὰ περί πάντων ἐπιστήμην). 35

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itics and cosmetics gymnastics.38 Rhetoric, ranking lowest in Plato’s knowledge system, “is not an art (τέχνην), but a habitude (ἐμπειρἱαν), since it has no account to give of the real nature of the things it applies and so cannot tell the cause of any of them. I refuse to give the name of art to anything that is irrational (ἄλογον πραγμα)”.39 A habit all the more dangerous since it aims at satisfaction without any consideration of fairness.40 Therefore, as believed by Plato, sophistry does not go beyond manipulation. That is to be understood when Plato affirms that a sophist is a “producer of persuasion”.41 A sophist offers an appearance of knowledge in exchange for money, so that rhetoric likens the hunting of domestic animals, that is, of wealthy and distinguished young men.42 The sophist’s victim falls into a trap of words, carried by the force of persuasion. Because of that, Plato uses the dialog form: he does not just want to make philosophical assessments, but to make the reader to question what he or she hears, i.e., to help getting him or herself out of the manipulating logos.43 It is the difference between ἐπεδεἱξατο (“to give a display”) and διαλεχθη̂ναι (“to discuss”).44 Dialectical speech, however, haunts the audience as well. But not in the way that rhetoric does, but because what it says is true.45 With respect to this, the only legitimated usage of rhetoric by Plato is that of persuading the unjust man to submit to the punishment that will bring him back to a state of pureness.46     40   41   42   43  

Cfr. ib. 465c fw. íb. 465a 1–4. Another name for art: “rational opinion”, Phaedrus 238b. Cfr. íb. 462b–d; vid. also 501a 3–5. íb. 453a 2: peithous dêmiourgos hê rhêtorikê. Cfr. Sophist 223b 2–7. Cfr. Robert Wardy, The Birth of Rhetoric. Gorgias, Plato and their successors (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 54 fw. 44   Gorgias 447a 6 and 447c 1. 45   Cfr. íb. 508e 6–509a 2. 46   íb. 480a and fw. That is precisely what Plato is intending to do with Calicles through storytelling (vid. 493a and fw.) 38 39

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However, Plato’s position seems to allow for still being pushed one step further. In Phaedrus he displays a notion of rhetoric reconciled with philosophy. Being trapped and pulled by rhetorical speech needs not be negative because it could mean we have gotten in touch with muses47 and, therefore, achieved a superior understanding of reality. But what remains untouchable in Plato’s approach is the priority of truth: if rhetoric is to be practiced, it is indispensable to be acquainted “with the similarity and dissimilarity of things”;48 especially with those which are very similar, because we might more easily be mistaken. Plato concludes that practicing rhetoric necessarily includes communicating truth:49 anyone who does not know his or her topic could undoubtedly make good speeches but would not possess the rhetorical art.50 Aristotle inherits the Plato’s first approach to rhetoric. He is however less suspicious of it and Aristotle grants more attention than Plato to the specifically rhetorical elements of speech―for instance, to the voice tone. Nonetheless it continues to be a prevalence of science over opinion, which results in the reduction of rhetoric to its therapeutical role. Optimistic regarding the possibilities of human knowledge, Aristotle thinks that truth, from an ideal point of view, can be achieved by everyone, for “the true and the just are naturally superior to their opposites”.51 However, since the prevalence of 47   Phaedrus 238c in Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 1, Harold North Fowler, trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd. 1966). Vid. also Ion 542a in Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9, W.R.M. Lamb, trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1925). See Christina Schefer, “Rhetoric as part of an initiation into the mysteries: a new interpretation of the platonic Phaedrus”, 175–96, in Ann N. Michelini, ed., Plato as author: the rhetoric of philosophy (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2003), 359 p. 48   Phaedrus 261e–262a. 49   “[…] unless he pays proper attention to philosophy he will never be able to speak properly about anything”, ib. 261a. 50   ib. 271d–272b. 51   Rhetoric I 1, 1355a 12.

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truth is not so automatic in the ambit of opinion,52 where we can be easily confused by our passions or prejudices, a philosopher needs rhetoric as “the faculty of discovering the possible means of persuasion in reference to any subject whatever”.53 Rhetoric is an art that implies knowledge of the causes;54 in this case, of the causes that make the speech persuasive.55 Philosophers should “pay attention to style […] not as being right, but necessary; for, as a matter of right, one should aim at nothing more in a speech than how to avoid exciting pain or pleasure. For justice should consist in fighting the case with the facts alone, so that everything else that is beside demonstration is superfluous; nevertheless, as we have just said, it is of great importance owing to the corruption of the hearer”.56 Therefore, the function of rhetoric can only be not to let the sophist make the weaker logos stronger than truth itself, it being up “to rhetoric to discover the real and apparent means of persuasion”57 and playing consequently an “ancillary service”.58 Rhetoric has to be based on what things are and on the basic principles of ethical behaviour: logic and ethics are required as previous disciplines.59 That leads to the following conclusion by   Cfr. Rhetoric I 9, 1367b 22–7.   ib. I 2, 1355b 26 and fw. 54   Aristoteles, Metaphysica 981a 24–b 6, in Aristotle in 23 Volumes, 52

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Vols.17, 18, Hugh Tredennick, tr. (Cambridge: MA, Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1933, 1989): “Nevertheless we consider that knowledge and proficiency belong to art rather than to experience, and we assume that artists are wiser than men of mere experience (which implies that in all cases wisdom depends rather upon knowledge); and this is because the former know the cause, whereas the latter do not”. 55   For instance, Rethoric I 10, where Aristotle comments on which and how many are the causes of injustice; or Rethoric II 1, 1378a 6–12, for the characteristics of an expert orator. 56   ib. III 1, 1404a 1–12. 57   ib. I 1, 1355b 15; vid. as well Peri sophistikon elenxion 1402a 23 and fw. 58   Wardy, 109–10. 59   Josef König, Einführung in das Studium des Aristoteles: an Hand einer Interpretation seiner Schrift über die Rhetorik (Freibur and München: Karl Alber, 2002), 43.

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Aristotle, reminiscent of Plato’s one aforementioned: persuasion is only possible about what is fair. To unfairness belongs on the contrary manipulation: it can be defended but not justified, likewise a corpse can be respectfully treated but not healed.60 Summarily, both Plato and Aristotle state that truth imposes itself on us. It must be supposed a teleological reality where truth is for mind and inversely. Plato expresses it so: discussion is possible when the interlocutors do not speak against their own convictions,61 which implies human mind’s trend to truth. Sophistry assigns to rhetoric much more importance because of its fundamental doubts about the possibility of understanding reality. In Gorgias’ essay On Nature we find the remarkable sentence: “Nothing exists. If anything does exist, it is unknowable. If anything can be known it is incommunicable”.62 It is persuasion that originates truth. From this point of view, the sophist’s purpose would not be to cheat young men but to teach the way to get by in an uncertain world. When no perfect knowledge can be gained, then everything turns out to be opinion and the sole possible knowledge is of rhetorical kind. As Wardy says, Gorgias would be dealing with “the likelihood, better, the reasonability (eikos)”63 of our world.

3. Ontological reinterpretation of rhetorical aspects

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fter having gone shortly through the main positions regarding rhetoric in Greek thinking, we can connect them with the Blumenberg’s reflections previously displayed. Relation to Being can be understood as direct and clear (cosmos) 60   Héctor Zagal, Retórica, inducción y ciencia en Aristóteles (México DF: Universidad Panamericana/Publicaciones Cruz O, 1993), 96. 61   Gorgias 495a 4. 62   Gorgias von Leontinoi, Reden, Fragmente und Testimonien, Th. Buchheim, ed. (Hamburg, 1989), 41. 63   Wardy, 33.

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and therefore there will be the possibility of science, or rather as difficult and even nonexistent and then rhetoric will be the ideal kind of knowledge. More specifically, it depends on whether there is a right comprehension of human temporality. Rhetoric has a subsidiary function if we had all the time in the world and, consequently, we could achieve a total understanding of reality and of ourselves; on the contrary, rhetoric turns out to be the only means to deal with reasonability, that is, with the peculiar type of knowledge that emanates from not being able to have all of the world and our existence. Summarily, whilst Platonic science would be suitable for immortal beings, rhetoric is the appropriate knowledge for mortals. As Blumenberg states, “revivals of rhetoric are, since Antiquity, a property of resignations of a certain kind”.64 Rhetorical speech bases, then, on an “axiom”65 that Blumenberg calls “principle of insufficient reason” (Prinzip des unzureichenden Grundes) as opposed to Leibniz’ “principle of sufficient reason”,66 that would have become paradigmatic of the Platonic comprehension. Once Blumenberg has carried out a transmutation of ontology in anthropology, rhetoric takes over the place assigned by Plato to philosophy. In the process, the function of philosophy has slightly changed. For Plato it was to achieve happiness through comprehension of reality, i.e., being immortal; for Blumenberg, to lessen the pain caused by not having the entire world (i.e., having to die), through avoiding to became aware of it. In order to clarify the ontological features of Blumenbergian rhetoric, I follow three steps. 64   Hans Blumenberg, Begriffe in Geschichten (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998), 164 (“ist Belebung von Rhetorik seit der Antike ein Merkmal bestimmter Resignationen”). 65   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 447. 66   That says: “nihil esse sine ratione, vel ut rem distinctius explicemus, nullam esse veritatem, cui ratio non subsist. Ratio autem veritatis consistit in nexu praedicati cum subiecto, seu ut praedicatum subiecto insit”: Gottfried W. Leibniz, in Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz, L. Couturat, ed. (Hildesheim, 1988), 11.

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Firstly, I show a general overview of the rhetorical elaboration of cosmos based in the symbolical features of language. Two aspects are here considered: rhetoric as (1) instrument of configuration of reality and, more specifically, as (2) instrument of instruments. As a result two Gorgian descriptions of rhetoric (as art of elaborating speeches and as fighting instrument) and the Aristotelian topoi are re-interpreted in ontological terms. These two last points deal with the basic aspects of human temporality for Blumenberg. Both of them are defined in respect to the pressure that absolutism of reality imposes on human beings. In front of it human beings react structurally in two ways. The first of them―this is the second step―considers human beings as being swept out to a relationship with reality for what it is not ready, and reacting by means of delaying entering in contact with it. In this sense the rhetorical characteristic of not going straightforward to the point, is reinterpreted ontologically as art of delaying; also the platonic interpretation of rhetoric as art of appearances. The second of them―third step―regards rhetoric as providing a way of responding to the pressure of reality when there are no more chances left to avoid it. In this case three more elements are “ontologized”: the topoi used in rhetorical speech; the Aristotelian goal of “easy learning”; and the time constraints of speech. In every one of this points it is discussed where the peculiar rationality of rhetoric lies in by means of contrast with the “absolutist reason”. In respect to that it is specially stressed the role played by metaphor in rhetorical reasonability. On the other hand, it is considered that each aspect of human temporality has some consequences for ethical behavior. Along the exposition, these three points are each examined both at the ontological level and in its expression at the anthropological level.

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s we pointed out above (1), the term “rhetoric” is in Blumenberg’s philosophy the key concept to introduce his anthropological thesis in the scope of ontological thinking. For a better understanding of this statement, it must be realized that philosophical anthropology has considered language as the instrument par excellence for the configuration of reality.67 Rhetoric as the art of elaborating speeches, as it was defined by Gorgias,68 happens to leave its simple ancillary role to be assigned an ontological task. Beginning with the anthropological point of view, it was argued that lack of instincts made difficult for human beings to work their living out. However, this handicap is balanced out and even overwhelmed by the possession of intelligence and its primary expression, language.69 In animals, both perception of reality and themselves are well structured by instincts since their very first moments in life. Human beings, on the contrary, perceive world as a chaotic cloud of signals in need of configuration to become signs with sense;70 and themselves as a pure possibility requiring to be given a form and whose sentimental correlate is the anguish of existentialism.71 Language is not―contrary to both Plato’s and Aristotle’s reports―secondary to thinking, a mere “adornment” (ornatus)72 to communicate a truth already held in mind and, in its most beautiful form (rhetoric), the lesser of two evils, required only because of either the weakness or the   It must be noted that Blumenberg, as we said above, has not spoken of the relation between mind and things but between words and things. 68   Marcello Zanatta, “L’arte del persuadere: la retorica in Platone e Aristotele” (preface), 27, in Marcello Zanatta, ed., Aristotele. Retorica (Milano: Unicopli, 2002), 227 p. 69   Hans Blumenberg, Arbeit am Mythos (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979), 10; Plessner, Die Stufen, 245. 70   Gehlen, Der Mensch, 41; Blumenberg, Höhlenausgänge, 812. 71   Cfr. Blumenberg, Arbeit am Mythos, 10. 72   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 430. 67

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perversion of recipient73. It turns out rather to be “a function of human beings’ specific difficulty”74, that is, of the puzzlement of being disoriented in a sinless world: “the art of surviving” (Überlebenskunst)75. Speaking does not consist only in communicating a content but in modifying a situation.76 This order is introduced in the very act of speech,77 so language learning in human beings occurs to be a regulating and categorizing action at the same time. A principal role is played in this process by the well-known phenomenon of echolalia, first studied by Herder and Humboldt. The child reacts to stimuli’s excessive appeal by elaborating and integrating them in its own vocalic response, so that resulting words do not merely mirror reality but bring in itself the child’s practical elaboration of stimuli.78 It can then be said that language “creates”79 reality. “What” comes to human beings as impression “of something alien and inaccessible” is given back to the world as “sensuously tangible” expression.80 Things are, in a certain sense, their names.81     75   76   77   78   73

Blumenberg, “Paradigmen“, 8. Blumenberg, “Approach”, 432. Blumenberg, Vollzähligkeit, 293. Rothacker, Probleme, 137. Plessner, Die Stufen, 442. Helmut Plessner, “Homo absconditus”, in Roman Rocek and Oskar Schatz, eds., Philosophische Anthropologie heute (München: Verlag, 1972), 54. 79   Arnold Gehlen, Gesamtausgabe. Bd. 4: Philosophische Anthropologie und Handlungslehre, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1983). Cfr. Hans Blumenberg, Ein mögliches Selbstverständnis. Aus dem Nachlass (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1997), 45 fw. 80   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 438. In Stoellger’s opinion, this situates Blumenberg in the Vico-tradition: Philip Stoellger, Metapher und Lebenswelt: Hans Blumenbergs Metaphorologie als Lebenswelthermeneutik und ihr religionsphänomenologischer Horizont (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 102 fw. Vico is the first author to make a process of construction of metaphors into a “model of adaptation of human behaviour to changing environment”: Ferdinand Fellman, Vico-Axiom. Der Mensch macht die Geschichte (Freiburg i. Br, 1976), 169 fw. 81   This intuition is what underlies Plato’s criticism of the association be74

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This understanding of language stresses its symbolical aspect and favorites the interpretation of human beings as Cassirer’s “animal symbolicum”.82 The subject of symbol connects the more general question of language with that of rhetoric. The situation of pressure of reality terms Blumenberg “rhetorical situation” (rhetorische Situation).83 A symbol or metaphor is, in its Aristotelian sense, something that stands for another thing.84 This can be seen both in Aristotle’s definition of metaphor85 and in the etymology of both words,86 and it is assumed by Blumenberg’s definitions of metaphor as a “heterogeneous element that refers to another context”,87 or something which “displays something that it is not present”.88 Examples of metaphors for Blumenberg can be that of the work clock for the universe―metaphor invented by Nicolas of Oresme89―in the beginning of Modernity, or tween rhetoric and magic―as has been pointed out by Wardy (40)―: the magic word identifies with the thing referred to, rendering it possible to control it. 82   Cassirer, Was ist der Mensch. 83   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 437. 84   Blumenberg hardly distinguishes between metaphor or symbol, rather he considers them as quite equivalent regarding their ability to “represent” (Repräsentanz) (Vollzähligkeit, 420); the only difference between them is that symbol is what a metaphor becomes when performing its outmost in the substitution of unavailable for available (“Ausblick”, 96). As Stoellger states correctly, Blumenberg does not take part in the contemporary debate about the symbol theory (Stoellger, 180). 85   “Metaphor by analogy means this: when B is to A as D is to C, then instead of B the poet will say D and B instead of D. And sometimes they add that to which the term supplanted by the metaphor is relative” Poetics 1457b 18–20 in Aristotle. Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 23, W.H. Fyfe, trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1932). 86   μεταφορὰ (from μετα-, “change” as verb particle; “between” as adverb; and -φέρω, “to bring”) and σύμβολον (from σύμ-, “with”; and -ballein “to put together”); it is well-known that with συìμβολον was meant each of the two parts of a broken piece of ceramic, through which someone’s identity could be certified: a short of credential. 87   Blumenberg, “Ausblick”, 98. 88   Blumenberg, Höhlenausgänge, 26. 89   Hans Blumenberg, “Selbsterhaltung und Beharrung. Zur Konstitution der neuzeitlichen Rationalität”, in Akademie der Wissenschaften und der

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that of Balint’s “condensator” for human psyche in the context of psychiatry.90 It is clear that, from this viewpoint, the “for”-element of the definition does not point to a possible comprehension of the reality for which the metaphor is.91 It is the “stand”-element that is emphasized: symbol is, with Aristotle, about “set[ting] things before the eyes”,92 but not in order to help us accept the truth but quite to place a front to prevent us from seeing it. While metaphors are for Aristotle just a resort at hand as it’s difficult for an orator to find real life examples,93 Blumenberg regards it as the condensation of everything we have said so far. The activity of introducing order in reality at the anthropological level is at the same time an ontological process of creation of reality, both external and internal. It is not that human beings create “the” reality, but surely they create “a” reality where they live. Blumenberg positions himself, naturally, on Gorgias’ side. Since language is an intersubjectivity reality,94 this activity of truth creation can only be possible in the consensus.95 It is the ontologization of what Aristotle calls “generally accepted principles” (τῶν κοινῶν)96 or “commonplaces” (τοὺς τόπους)97: the context of a world in the commonality of “convention” (Konvention).98 Thus, a statement being true does not have much to do with a mental content fitting its correlate in reality, but with the function it perLiteratur in Mainz. Abhandlungen der geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse 11 (1970), 340. 90   Blumenberg, Begriffe, 86. 91   This question will be treated later. 92   Rhetoric III 11, 1411b25: “πρό ὀμμάτων ποιει̂ν”; see also Poet 17, 1455a 21 fw. 93   See Rhetoric II 20 1, 1393b 5–10. 94   See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen Philosophical Investigations (The Macmillan Company: New York, 1970), §199. 95   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 436. 96   Rhetoric 1355a24–9. 97   Rhetoric 1358a 12–14. 98   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 443.

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forms in order to make sense.99 The true may consequently change with time.100 Therefore, Blumenberg puts an end to the equivalence inaugurated by Plato between rhetoric and manipulation. Persuading might be not lying when truth is not evident even to who is persuading.101 Moreover if, as it was said before, the activity of creating cosmos could be equaled in a certain sense to the elaboration of the own self-understanding, whoever tries to talk someone into something is seeking not so much to convince others as much as to persuade him or herself of the correctness of his or her own self-understanding. Thus, it may be said that every statement of rhetorical kind is always “canvassing rhetoric”.102 Nonetheless a cognitive function for the “for”-element in symbol’s definition is not excluded in Blumenberg’s analysis. But it does not go “forward”, to the reality, but “backwards”, to the life-world. We see it next, in relation to the Platonic and Aristotelic notion of “resemblance”. Plato asserts that rhetoric will be “the art by which a man will be able to produce a resemblance between all things between which it can be produced, and to bring to the light the resem-

99   Hans Blumenberg, “Sokrates und das ‘objet ambigu’. Paul Valérys Auseinandersetzung mit der Tradition der Ontologie des ästhetischen Gegenstandes”, Franz Wiedmann, ed., Epimeleia. Die Sorge der Philosophie um den Menschen. Helmut Kuhn zum 65. Geburtstag (München: Pustet, 1964), 290. Blumenberg follows here the Ernst Cassirer’s criticism of Aristotle’s epistemology, Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff. Untersuchungen über die Grundfragen der Erkenntniskritik (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft: Darmstadt, 19693 [1910]). 100   Cfr. Hans Blumenberg, Die erste Frage an den Menschen. All der biologische Reichtum des Lebens verlangt eine Ökonomie seiner Erklärung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 2.6.2001, 127. There is only one “eternal” truth of human nature: the formal “ontological movement” (ontologische Bewegung) between Inständigkeit and Gegenständigkeit: Blumenberg, Legitimacy, 457– 81. 101   Blumenberg, “Lebenswelt”, 13. 102   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 443.

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blances produced and disguised by anyone else”.103 It will be a fair imitation when rhetorician sticks to “true reasoning”, while when he or she does not―producing in consequence what Plato terms “spoken images”104―, he or she is able to mislead the listener. A false doctor but experienced rhetorician, would sound more knowledgeable about an issue than a true doctor who does not manage the art of speaking, for the former can make his or her speech more agreeable and, therefore, more likely to be accepted by the ignorant. Following Plato, Aristotle speaks of rhetoric as of an art of managing resemblances.105 Metaphor can act as a representation―in the sense exposed above―because it rests on analogy, that is, on a communal aspect between two things; with an Aristotelian example, an arbitrator and an altar are said to be the same since the injured fly to both for refuge. Both for Plato and Aristotle, resemblance is possible because the “for” implies a true knowledge about reality. Blumenberg resorts, on the contrary, to the Husserlian concept of life-world to explain where the possibility of establishing resemblances lies. There we find at the same time the possibility of the “for” we were talking about.106 Any metaphor stands not “for” reality but “for” a complex relations field within the wider net in which the life-world consists. For instance, to understand the universe as a work clock tell us nothing about the universe in itself but about how we understand ourselves and our place in the world, what depends in turn on a net of interrelated senses of which human life and culture is comprised. In the same vein, the notion of God, that for Blumenberg is a metaphor, shows what kind of being is man when trying to push its self-understanding to its limits.107     105   106   107   103 104

Phaedrus 211d–e. Sophist 234c (“εἴδωλα λεγόμενα”). See Rhetoric I 19 9, 1367b 13 (geitnian). Blumenberg, “Ausblick”, 98 and fw. Blumenberg, “Approach”, 456. Blumenberg has a book completely de-

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This would be an aspect of rationality of rhetoric: considered as a piece of information about our life-world. It would serve for the metaphorologue’s “academic” purposes. A second aspect has to do more with the individual life who seeks to create a cosmos: it gives him or her a “glance” of reality and, as “open” beings, metaphors provide him or her with new possibilities of living, i.e., of acquiring or enriching a self-understanding. It serves the metaphorologue as human being. That is irrational for the absolutist reason―for instance in its scientific shape. The target of science is to establish a causal relation among given facts108 expressed in concepts, whose measure is “truth”. Neither a global vision of reality nor a possibility are facts. On the contrary, the principle of insufficient reason focuses on human “openness”. Its measure is not truth but “significance” (Bedeutsamkeit). It means that it is perceived and taken into account109 by human beings only what carries out a function both in the preservation of life and in its development (that is, in its elaboration of a self-understanding), though be it not “real” or only still to come. Since theory implies human beings as having all the time in the world, human life’s individuality can be disregarded, which constitutes the base for scientific objectivity: statements acceptable by everyone at every time, unrelated to their own circumstances.110 voted to this issue: Hans Blumenberg, Matthäuspassion (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988). 108   Blumenberg, “Weltbilder”, 48. 109   Blumenberg, Höhlenausgänge, 812. This notion, first formulated as the “principle of significance” by Rothacker in his Zur Genealogie des menschlichen Bewusstseins (Bonn 1966), 44–52, says that a human being perceives only those objects of existential relevance for it. So to speak, significance takes the place of a causal mechanism of stimulus-reaction in a human being: Barbara Merker, “Bedürfnis nach Bedeutsamkeit. Zwischen Lebenswelt und Absolutismus der Wirklichkeit”, Franz Joseph Wetz, H. Timm, eds., Die Kunst des Überlebens. Nachdenken über Hans Blumenberg (Frankfurt a.M.: Shurkamp, 1999), 83. 110   Blumenberg, Legitimacy, 129. Let’s see Nagel’s definition of objectivity: “A view or form of thought is more objective than another if it relies less

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Science is not able to forecast where a human life can get to or what it can achieve, while rhetoric “has to do not with facts but with expectations”.111 Therefore “in our practice we turn into an axiom, as a ‘postulate’, what provides a motive for taking advantage of the more favorable prospects for humanity”,112 for example the existence of God, liberty, immortality, i.e., of whatever helps make sense of human life. To “the probability” (Wahrscheinlichkeit) of scientific statements, the “credible” (glaubwürdig) or “verisimilar” (dem Wahren ähnlich) of practical ones must be opposed.113 The principle of insufficient reason thus summons human beings to act as though true theoretical statements (may they be either philosophical or scientific) were not worthy of consideration as soon as one’s own self-understanding is put in a tight corner; for example, when some psychological version of the evolutionary theory concludes that human beings are only animals, or love only a chemical reaction.114 It is worthwhile for human beings to “bear”115 an insufficient knowledge where otherwise human life might be handed over to the indifference of absolutist reason.116 on the specifics of the individual’s makeup and position in the world, or on the character of the particular type of creature he is”: cfr. Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1986), 5. 111   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 451. 112   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 450. “Axiom” in the Kantian sense, as the statement of the practical reason that can be neither demonstrated nor even understood by theoretical reason, but that is necessary for the exercise of practical reason: Gesammelten Werken (Akademieausgabe) Bd. 5: Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Kritik der Urteilskraft (1798), (electronic edition: Institut für Kommunikationsforschung und Phonetik (IKP) - Universität Bonn, Bonn), 473; url: http://www.ikp.uni-bonn.de/kant/aa05/. 113   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 451; Paradigmen, 91. 114   Hans Blumenberg, “Weltbilder und Weltmodelle”, Nachrichten der Gießener Hochschulgesellschaft 30 (1961), 74. 115   Hans Blumenberg, “Ausblick auf eine Theorie der Unbegrifflichkeit”, Schiffbruch mit Zuschauer. Paradigma einer Daseinsmetapher (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979), 98. 116   Blumenberg, Arbeit am Mythos, 19, 437. The negation of the logic of life (that is, of its preservation) from side of theory results not only in disrupting

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The “irrationality” of rhetoric can be more precisely outlined with Blumenberg’s term Unbegreifflichkeit (“unconceptuability”)117. Because of that “absolute metaphors” (absolute Metaphern)118 take a special place between metaphors, so-called because they present both a global interpretation of world and self, and resistance to be reduced to concepts. (2) But language is not only a “tool” for the creation of sense, but it is an instrument of instruments. Its peculiarity lies in that every other instrument―either mental or physical―exists through language. It is not limited to just one function, like a hammer or the knowledge about how to make cookies. This was already perceived by Plato, Aristotle and the sophists. Plato criticizes what he considers an odd feature of rhetoric― based on considering words as imitations, as we have seen―, praised by sophists: their capability to speak about every topic as if they know everything about every thing. In his criticism Plato has probably Gorgias’ words in mind, rhetoric is to be understood as a fighting instrument119 that might be used at wish either for justice or injustice.120 The same is observed by Aristotle who, to self-understanding but logically in destroying life itself. Blumenberg gives the nazi genocide as an example: to consider people as animals―based on “scientific” statements―brought on the possibility of eliminating them like animals. 117   Blumenberg, Paradigmen, 21. This is to be understood in the context of Kantian categories and referring primarily to concrete existence, that is not located in the categories framework: Cassirer, Substanzbegriff, 403. 118   Blumenberg, Paradigmen, 13. As we mentioned at the very beginning, metaphorology’s object is the historical going over about variation of absolute metaphors. 119   Gorgias 456d 1. 120   For Gorgias, rhetoric is not all about knowing a certain object, but about knowing the right combination of words that has the desired effect on the audience; see Marcello Zanatta, “L’arte del persuadere: la retorica in Platone e Aristotele”, 27, in Marcello Zanatta, ed., Aristotele. Retorica (Milano: Unicopli, 2002), 227. This vision is supported by Gorgias’ understanding of word’s meaning as being made of a very subtle stuff, that would cause a “physical” reaction in the listener’s soul (Encommium of Helena, §14, quoted by Giuseppe Mazzara, Gorgia: la Retorica del Verosimile (Academia Verlag: Sankt Agustin, 1999), 261). Words have thus a “real” effect on people.

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the statement “words are imitations”,121 adds remarkably “and the voice also, which of all our parts is best adapted for imitation”.122 Rhetoric is, therefore, “form as means for, obedience of rules as an instrument”,123 “sheer method” (reine Methode).124 We have seen that Gorgian rhetoric as both art of elaborating speeches and instrument of instruments, such as Aristotelian topoi, are “ontologized”. Other rhetorical features spring from the consideration of human temporality. Its peculiar biological and ontological constitution converts human beings’ consciousness of time in a dialectical experience. On the one side, a human being is an animal that has to think twice before coming into contact with a hostile reality, for it lacks the competent means for it. It suffers from what Blumenberg calls a structural “perplexity”. This aspect is to be discussed in the following pages under the title of rhetoric as the art of delaying. It is “ontologized” the rhetorical circumstantia and rhetoric as art of appearances. On the other side, as there is no more options left to avoid   Rhetoric 1355b 8–35.   Íb. 1404a 22–25. This last sentence by Aristotle, when confronted with

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what was said before, reveals a deep sense about the relation between the anthropological and ontological levels. The wide range of sounds of which human voice is capable―made possible by the lack of instincts (Plessner, Die Stufen, 54)―reveals the ontological sense at an anatomic level: that words can “imitate” things because language has played an important role in how we perceive them. See also Plato, Cratylus 423b fw., in Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 12, Harold N. Fowler, trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd. 1921): “A name, then, it appears, is a vocal imitation of that which is imitated, and he who imitates with his voice names that which he imitates”. 123   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 431 (original text: “Form als Mittel, Regelhaftigkeit als Organ”). 124   Blumenberg, “Lebenswelt und Technisierung unter Aspekten der Phänomenologie” (7–54), in Wirklichkeiten in denen wir leben. Aufsätze und eine Rede (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981), 45. As an anatomical counterpart of this anthropological flexibility of language, human beings happen uniquely to be in possession of five finger hands, the “instrument of instruments” at the anatomical level.

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reality, human beings must react swiftly and amidst uncertainty to the situations they are confronted with: it is the expression of a radical not having enough time. Rhetorical is, in this case as well, the way human beings counter it. Here we find an “ontologization” of Aristotelian topoi from a different point of view, as well as of the target of rhetoric for Aristotle (“easy learning”). Both aspects will serve as conducting threads to the theme of rationality of rhetoric and its ethical consequences.

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his aspect of rhetoric has found expression in popular sayings, like when said that a person “goes on and on”… but he says actually nothing! At the ontological level, as we said before, in the place of the pressure of reality do human beings place a symbolic world to be able to live on in this reality. In relation to the aspect of rhetoric we are discussing now, “lacking definitive evidence”125 in our relation to the world justifies a delaying in our approaching it until we had ideally gained an “understanding” (Verständnis).126 Yet that is not possible, due to the radical closure of reality. Therefore human beings are by definition perpetually deferring its disembarkation in reality, keeping its distance to it. Language can be regarded as the “de-realizator” per excellence. If kept in mind that not being able to get to this understanding is equivalent to be a mortal being, then it is clear that human beings’ whole efforts go to not dying. We could say: man is an indirect being,127 a being whom “detour”128 is a structural feature. This makes it deserve the name of     127   128   125

Blumenberg, “Approach”, 441. Blumenberg, “Approach”, 447. Cfr. Gehlen, Philosophische Anthropologie. Blumenberg, “Approach”, 438; Hans Blumenberg, Lebensthemen. Aus dem Nachlaß (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1998), 15 fw. 126

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“hesitant being” (zögerndes Wesen):129 human beings’ existential structure requires “to take one’s time” before acting. Rhetoric can then be understood as the human life itself as interposing procedures to avoid straight deals with reality: “circumstantiality” (Umständlichkeit),130 the ontologization of Cicero’s circumstantia.131 The basic relational form between human life and reality is therefore―with a term coined by Gehlen132―“unload” (Entlastung),133 discharge of the burden of reality: “substitution of absolutism of reality”134 for a world of appearance. The symbolic world would be what we need to busy ourselves with in order to avoid the awareness of death. This is task of rhetoric defined as “art of appearance” (Kunst des Scheins).135 Plato’s derogatory statement about the rhetorician as being a “conjurer”136 turns out to receive a positive ontological significance: rhetoric engages us with its verbal tricks, making appear and disappear a linguistic reality where there is literally nothing.137 Rhetoric is also then an art of illusionism. From an anthropological point of view, loss of instincts is like a short-circuit in the stimulus-reaction chain; in other words, it means the nonappearance of an immediate and automatic reaction to stimulus. This means at least two different problems that human being must confront.   Blumenberg, Vollzähligkeit, 487.   Blumenberg, Arbeit am Mythos, 159–60; Lebensthemen, 15. 131   Cicero, Topica, Tobias Reinhardt, ed. (New York: Oxford University 129 130

Press, 2006), I.VIII; cfr. Bruno Accarino, “Nomadi e no. Antropogenesi e potenzialismo in Hans Blumenberg”, in Andrea Borsari (ed.), Hans Blumenberg. Mito, metafora, modernità (Bologna: Ed. Il Mulino, 1999), 216, n. 36. 132   Gehlen, Der Mensch, 26. 133   Blumenberg, Höhlenausgänge, 25. 134   Blumenberg, Höhlenausgänge, 71. 135   “Approach”, 430. 136   “θαυματοποιω̂ν”, Sophist 235b3. 137   Cfr. Hans Blumenberg, Die Verführbarkeit des Philosophen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), 54.

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On the one hand, human beings face situations of perplexity or of danger for which they are not biologically equipped.138 In front of them human beings respond not in a physical way, like animals, but in a rhetorical one.139 For example, starting a fight can be substituted by a slight raise of the eyebrow and have the same effect. Human being does not know (or want) anymore what to do in front of the requirements of reality, and therefore it does what it can: to do as though it did something. Paraphrasing the sentence attributed to Aristotle, “the thought of fire does not burn”, it can be said that the action of symbolizing is not real so far it introduces no change in reality; but it is on the contrary a “real” action so far it helps human beings to live humanly. The process of “substituting physical accomplishments for verbal [i.e. symbolic] ones is an anthropological ‘radical’”.140 Examples of this art of delaying are Greek myths. Myth establishes a daedal set of rules and procedures to manage the relation among gods, and between them and mortals; however, what myth is really intending to do is having divine, arbitrary, huge power (i.e. absolute power) closed into certain boundaries.141 On the other hand, through loss of instincts human beings are deprived also of regulating and channeling means for their impulses that become exuberant and disorientated. Thus the stimuli overabundance is matched by an “impulsive overabundance”. That explains the common experience of being seized by a fit of passion, which may bring us to lately regrettable decisions.   Hans Blumenberg, “Wirklichkeitsbegriff und Staatstheorie”, Schweizer Monatshefte 48 (1968), 137. 139   At least so long as they are allowed to postpone it, as we will see in the next section: cfr. Blumenberg, Die Sorge, 13. 140   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 438. Probably these ideas were taken from Plessner, “Homo absconditus”, 75. It could then be asked what is the specific in the eyebrow movement in comparison with certain threat signs in many animal species. Although we cannot discuss that subject here, something about it will be said later. 141   For example, Blumenberg considers politeism as a “technique of weakening” (Technik der Schwächung), Arbeit am Mythos, 142. 138

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To avoid it human beings build delaying mechanisms in its behavior, both at individual (to give a sober second thought) and institutional level.142 Another expression of the art of delaying is that the human capacity for taking one thing for another is true also from a reverse standpoint: the capability of “delegation” (Delegation),143 so that “we needn’t do or know everything that is necessary for self-preservation”.144 In the pressure of rhetorical situation, to get others to make what oneself should do (they consequently standing for us) is another means of not having to confront reality ourselves. What is rational in the art of delaying is, as we know, that it corresponds to the “logic of life”. It is seen as irrational by both scientific and some philosophical approaches as far as, from the viewpoint of absolutist reason, existence has no reason to exist. For example, while an aspect of technological progress is “concentration of processes [with the] intention of saving time”,145 so often in human affairs it’s more convenient to put off doing something. What is technically possible need not be the most “timely”. Human beings must lead a life of existential “procrastination”. Moreover, technological complexity can nowadays be very much like the original situation of “overabundance of stimuli”146 that we mentioned before. In such open-to-doubt situations, long political/rhetorical digressions can “make uncertain that the shortest line between two points is the human way as well”.147 Blumenberg reinterprets here Husserl’s analysis in Die   Some authors in the field of public rational choice interpret in this way the institutional division, in congress and senate, of political choice-making process: Elster, J., “Intertemporal choice and political thought”, in G. Loewenstein & J. Elster (eds.), Choice over time (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992), 35–53. 143   Blumenberg, Vollzähligkeit, 420. 144   Blumenberg, Höhlenausgänge, 71. 145   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 444–45. 146   Blumenberg, Begriffe, 111. 147   Hans Blumenberg, Gerade noch Klassiker. Glossen zu Fontane 142

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Krisis, upon the irrationality of natural sciences and their technological appendix in the context of the need for a clarifying reflection about both the sense of the world and of human beings and its action.148 According to Husserl, technology is led by an “active ignorance”149 (it is enough to know how to use it, not why it works as it does), it being needed of being put under the guidance of reason if it has to serve human interests. Accordingly to Plato, rhetoric gives only an appearance of explanation but not a real one at all. Blumenberg’s belief is that human life needs not investigate its causes, neither with a scientific nor philosophical approach, because it would run the risk of discovering it has no sense. Rhetorical metaphors or myths are not used to “replace theory (…) but to make it unnecessary”150 by having us engaged.151 That is exactly what makes them rational. Prisoners’ refusal to leave the platonic cave is not due to their irrationality, but to not wanting to have a direct experience of reality.152 Rhetoric can also take the form of philosophy when it performs a rhetorical function; what has been the case, for Blumenberg, of every philosophical system before his metaphorology, since they all were, as it was mentioned before, cosmistic. That means, they have played the game of entertaining us by promising imminent answers to the important questions but actually never getting to (München: Hanser, 1998), 122 (emphases added). 148   Edmund Husserl, Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981), 14. Cfr. Blumenberg, “Lebenswelt”, 26. 149   Blumenberg, “Lebenswelt”, 33. 150   Blumenberg, Höhlenausgänge, 168. As Gehlen explains (Der Mensch, 360), in the field of vital knowledge the usual way to elaborate perturbations (for instance a burn) is not to investigate the causes of the event (why fire burns) but rather a shock and the ensuing prevention (not to get too close to the bonfire anymore). 151   Blumenberg, Höhlenausgänge, 164. 152   It is of great interest how Blumenberg describes the situation of someone who leaves the cave: sunlight blinds him or her and as a result he or she “loses” his or her world: the sun is the truth (finitude), which makes us realize our world is a fake (cfr. Ontologische Distanz, 44).

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them, because such a thing would mean to become aware that there are no such answers.153 Rhetoric disguised as philosophy equates a never-ending rumor superimposed on the terrifying silence of Being.154 Without this game of providing apparent answers to the questions posed by the inherent tendency of reason to ask for the causes, we would get sooner or later to the experience of finitude. From the absolutist reason’s point of view, rhetorical speech “says nothing”; from rhetoric’s side, there’s (literally) nothing to say. It might accept theoretical requirements to “cutting the nonsense”, “stopping beating about the bush”, “speaking out plainly”… only at the cost of disappearing itself. Metaphorology, from this viewpoint builds up a new history providing an appearance of answers to fundamental questions, by telling the history of metaphors, but really preventing us from getting to truth.155 The “basic estrangement”156 between this aspect of reason and life, as in the prior section, justifies acting “as though” (als ob)157 these were no true.158 Rhetoric is, from this vantage point, “the art of persuading ourselves to ignore [theory]” in the case it is   Blumenberg, Lebensthemen, 86–7. Blumenberg gives a memorable description of this point in “Das Sein - ein MacGuffin”, Selbstverständnis, 157–160. 154   Hans Blumenberg, “Weltbilder”, 69–74. 155   Thus, Metaphorology takes the place of Husserl’s phenomenology and its infinite work on the philosophical object, an object that becomes the history of the analytical approaches to it: cfr. Emmanuel Levinás, En découvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger (Paris: Vrin, 1967), 174). However, Blumenberg subjects this concept to an inversion: infinite work-on is rational not because we get to know better, but because it avoids uncovering. 156   Blumenberg, Vollzähligkeit, 155. 157   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 450. 158   With these reflections, Blumenberg pushes forward the husserlian construction of life-world (“Lebenswelt”), that, roughly said, is matched by Husserl to ordinary life and thought as a reserve of sense for human life in front of the abstraction of occidental science. Edmund Husserl, “Kant und die Idee der Traszendentalphilosophie”, Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Erster Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte (Husserliana. Gesammelte Werke VII), Rudolf Boehm, ed. (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1956), 232. Cfr. Blumenberg, Begriffe, 107. 153

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unbearable for praxis.159 As Wardy points out, to enjoy a tragedy one must let himself into a disposition to be deceived.160 It is not about sheer cynicism: it not only responds to the logic of life, but to unavailability of knowledge of reality for any kind of knowledge, also for the scientific one. The difference between practical and theoretical knowledge is not in our access to reality or Being―as if theory were able to achieve “the” truth. Both of them are insufficient accesses to Being, so that the only difference between them is that theory has an infinite time to concoct;161 accordingly we are allowed for not taking too seriously its statements, because they may also change over time.162 These arguments have far-reaching consequences for ethics. Contrary to the “openness” of human beings, for the absolutist reason human life is supposed to have a specific target, whose elucidation would be the task of the Platonic “ethical science”. However, radical lack of a pre-determined telos of human life requires an “understanding” of a rhetorical kind that, since a complete determination of human life is not possible, takes detours and persists and is re-elaborated during the whole lifetime.163 To understand the rationality of human action is, from this standpoint, an “introduction to every ethical problem. We should know what we are doing in order to know whether it is what we should be doing”.164 However, an ethics that, like the Platonic one, “takes the evidentness of the good as point of departure leaves no room for rhetoric―as the theory and practice of influencing behavior on the assumption that we do not have access to definitive evidence of the good”.165 The Platonic man would feel warranted to say   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 451.   Wardy, 36. 161   Hans Blumenberg, Das Lachen der Thrakerin. Eine Urgeschichte der 159 160

Theorie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987), 17; “Approach”, 437. 162   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 449. 163   Blumenberg, Matthäuspassion, 96. 164   Blumenberg, “Weltbilder”, 68. 165   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 432.

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to the Blumenbergian one: “stop beating about the bush: what you must do is…” Blumenberg finds this position problematic, even potentially perilous, much more if the philosopher finally becomes king, because he would want to impose his idea of happiness to everyone.166

6. Rhetorical modes of responding to not having enough time

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ack of instincts may require, as we have seen, an art of delaying. Yet, on the contrary, an art of quick response too, when there are both no chance to continue avoiding the “crash” with reality and deficit of guidances to manage it. The rhetorical situation is often determined by “being compelled to act (Handlungszwang)”167 or “being compelled to take a decision (Entscheidungszwang)”.168 Thus, human beings are constituently those that “have not enough time”. It implies that, both anthropologically and ontologically, human behavior needs to be automated to a certain degree in order to react conveniently to complex situations. On the one hand, this characteristic of the rhetorical situation can be seen in the “restricted time allotted to speakers”,169 that for Aristotle is necessary to achieve the target of rhetoric: “easy learning”.170 Since ordinary people can’t stand time-consuming reasoning, rhetorical speech should avoid being too long or it 166   Cfr. Blumenberg, Vollzähligkeit, 187, 76. As Wardy says (76), Plato rejects democracy because he considers that truth does not emerge in the agora, but in the face to face conversation: Socrates affirms that the single witness of the veracity of his reasonings that he admits, is his persuaded interlocutor (Gorgias 474a5–b1). 167   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 437. 168   Blumenberg, Vollzähligkeit, 130. In my opinion Blumenberg echoes Plessner’s concept of Vollzugszwang: Plessner, Die Stufen, 395. 169   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 437. 170   Rhetoric III 10 2, 1410b 21.

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runs the risk of missing audience’ attention. On the other hand and from a properly anthropological standpoint, human passions play a significant role in a quick reaction. Both Plato and Aristotle see here an opportunity for rhetoricians to manipulate people via emotions.171 For Plato, rhetoricians study and draw up an index of character types to make sure that his or her influence will be successful.172 But they do not really know what they are doing because their knowledge, as it was said before, is rather “a routine and habitude”173 than a true understanding, and consequently their influence ends up being a manipulation. Their speech results in the mere employment of given common senses (topoi) which unleashes listeners’ automatic reactions. Aristotle grants nevertheless more legitimacy to passions through their integration into practical judgments.174 So, to develop a rhetorical speech is the art of driving people angry when they should be, i. e., when presenting something morally wrong to them.175 To persuade is not only to help think about something but act on something: rhetoric is the only discipline that not only contemplates its object but takes into account the subject.176 Yet rhetoric may become also for Aristotle a sort of emotional manipulation177 if passion raising statements being resorted to are a consequence of “speaking outside the subject”178―that is, as much as they are far from truth. From this standpoint, human action would be irrational because not enough time is taken to reflect on it, to weigh it up, to analyze it, to gain a global comprehension of the issues involved. Kant agrees with it as he says that rhetoric is to regret because it transforms human beings into     173   174   175   176   177   178   171 172

Cfr. Wardy, 52. Phaedrus 271c–272b. Gorgias 501a 3–5. Rhetoric II 1 3, 1378a 20–30; see also Et. Nic. II 3, 1104b 15. Rhetoric III 7 1, 1408a 15–20. Topics, 155b4, 10. See Rhetoric III 18 3, 1419b 25–6. Rhetoric I 1 2, 1354a 24–6.

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machines.179 For Blumenberg, nevertheless, there are enough dangers and pressures in reality to justify as to become a machine.180 Among Aristotelian topoi, metaphors are the “common places” par excellence regarding its function of automatizing human behavior. As I said, metaphors put something in front of listener’s eyes, giving him or her visualization, immediate understanding of it. Its “simplicity”181 provides a swift action guide which, as Blumenberg says, “induces [agent] to jump into another level”.182 The metaphor of “jump” introduces again the topic of the rationality of rhetoric. Decision is described as a “jump” because it involves abandoning the familiar ground towards terra ignota. In every decision there is always a point of “faith”―of irrationality, from a scientific standpoint―and that is what Blumenberg wants to emphasize. Metaphors help us take a course of action where no clear course can be seen. As a surgeon, I might have doubts about whether I should save the convict’s life lying in front of me. From a “rational” point of view, to be completely sure we should know his whole future life course and weigh pros and cons in terms of benefits for both him and society. This is clearly impossible, not only because my lifetime is too short for that, but because his life is all but an already-written story. Therefore, we must resort to fables, anecdotes, fairy tales (metaphors) where “application” of indisputable principles like “do good, not bad” is the rule. 179   Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Kritik der Urtheilskraft, 327: “aber Rednerkunst (ars oratoria) ist, als Kunst sich der Schwächen der Menschen zu seinen Absichten zu bedienen (diese mögen immer so gut gemeint, oder auch wirklich gut sein, als sie wollen)”. 180   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 455. The principle of insufficient reason is identified by Blumenberg with the pascalian “reason of effects (Raison des effets)”, that regulates “the natural and automated mechanism of ordinary impulses”: Hans Blumenberg, “Das Recht des Scheins in den menschlichen Ordnungen bei Pascal”, Philosophisches Jahrbuch 57 (1947), 428. 181   Hans Blumenberg, “Paradigma, grammatisch”, in Wirklichkeiten in denen wir leben. Aufsätze und eine Rede (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981), 159. 182   Blumenberg, “Ausblick ”, 96.

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As opposite to metaphor we find concept, which tolerates the Husserlian “infinite work-on” of reason; therefore the impossibility of decision that implies by definition an interruption of the deliberative process.183 From this perspective, both the “saving time” strategy and the “active ignorance” of the technological world―due to its complexity―criticised by Husserl, appears as the very essence of the principle of insufficient reason. Husserl’s attempt to rationally clarify human action misses the point at least in three different ways: that rhetorical situation compels human being to act so many times without thinking twice; that too much cerebration would lead to undesirable consequences, such as uncovering finitude―expressed in this ambit as absence of guidances, i.e., indecision in the act of choice; and eventually that such a clarification is not possible, as stated by Blumenberg’s ontological skepticism. The structural shortage of time is what, in Blumenberg’s opinion, explains why the philosopher is made a fool by the Thracian slave184 or by the cave inhabitants as he or she comes back after having seen the “reality”.185 The philosopher is not able to meet the challenges of practical life―“there’s not enough light”, says Blumenberg―and makes steadily a fool of him or herself. Blumenberg sees it as the effect of intending a “«critical» destruction and consequent «definitive foundation»” of practical thinking, as proposed by Husserl,186 which would impose “such 183   To the question of how the theoretical reason determines itself to become practical, Kant answers: “I don’t know”. The condition for this ignorance was already treated by the Aquinas, who gave the following explanation: human will is infinite, so that no concrete good―being finite―can determine it to action. If it could, deliberative process will be a sort of pros-and-cons calculus from which it would “fall” the heavier-weighted option: cfr. Summa Theologica, Enrique Alarcón, ed., S. Thomae Aquino. Opera omnia (Universitatis Studiorum Navarrensis, Pamplona, http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/iopera.html), I–II, q. 10, a.3. 184   Blumenberg, Lachen, 16. 185   Blumenberg, Höhlenausgänge, 87. 186   “Nichts, das nicht absolut gerechtfertigt ist, soll gelten”: Edmund Husserl, Erster Philosophie (1923/4). Zweiter Teil: Theorie der phänomenolo-

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a level of rational proof that it would leave no room for what is really intended with this process: the rational movement of existence”.187 Theory in general, and its major exponent Husserl, “has idealized itself as the necessity of seeking a fundament for life; nevertheless, it is typical of life not to need fundament at all”.188 Thereafter, “in the realm of reasoning about practical activities in life, it can be more rational to accept something on insufficient grounds [das Unzureichende] than to insist on a procedure modeled on that of science”.189 If it was said in the previous section that Husserl’s intuition underlying his concept of “infinite work on” was a good approach to practical rationality, from this other point of view it must be said it is not. It might be accurate, Blumenberg thinks, to liken vital and practical thinking to Descartes’ concept of provisory moral knowledge. It was expressed through the metaphor of the traveler lost in the forest.190 When disorientation is total, the only rational behavior is taking an arbitrary path and following it without dismay, for there is only one thing sure: every forest comes to an end.191 Rational in the rhetorical situation―which, however, does not have an end―is this: the only justification to take a certain direction is being compelled to act;192 waiting until every necessary piece of information is available may be very rational from a theoretical viewpoint but it surely would mean an early death. Metaphor is then the right orientation for Handlungszwang. In this sense and introducing the ontological aspect in our analysis, metaphor’s standing for can be understood in the following way: gischen Reduction (Husserliana. Gesammelte Werke VIII), Rudolf Boehm, ed. (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1959), 6. 187   Blumenberg, “Lebenswelt”, 47. 188   Blumenberg, Höhlenasugänge, 150–1. 189   Blumenberg, “Approach”, 448. 190   René Descartes, Discours de la méthode (Le Livre de Poche, 1970), III 22. 191   Blumenberg, “Selbsterhaltung”, 18. 192   Blumenberg, Glossen, 80.

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as a means of having at least something (the symbol), when there is no enough time to obtain the real object. Since human beings’ desires are directed to have things in themselves, to be content with their signs has to do with the “constitutive impatience of individual”.193 In the human war against finitude, it is a great success “not to need have things in themselves […] but their mere signs”:194 at least something.195 For instance: understanding the universe as a work-clock is a way of having the world in a certain aspect when we do not have enough time to have it as it is, because it would take us an eternity.196 Human beings can thus have every thing, as it is experienced in the vicarious life provided by literature.197 From this point of view, in the presence of radical questions about existence metaphorology offers a prompt “answer” in the form of erudite storytelling about the diverse answers that have been given to these questions, making as though in turn it was an answer. So it provides an orientation for human beings’ life quickly, succeeding again in the task of hiding contingence from view. All of this has ethical consequences that Blumenberg illustrates with a theological metaphor: human action is constituently “sinful”. And that for two main reasons: 1) Lack of evidence makes both most consequences of human actions harmful and responsibility for them much less heavy than moralists of sufficient reason principle would be willing to accept: “Most people are probably not more guilty [for their deci    195   196  

Blumenberg, Lebenszeit, 190–1. Blumenberg, Lebenszeit, 169. Hans Blumenberg, “Glossen zu Anekdoten”, Akzente 30 (1983) 1, 34. Arnold Gehlen, Urmensch und Spätkultur. Philosophische Ergebnisse und Aussagen (Athenäum–Verlag: Bonn, 1956), 162. This aspect of symbolization is based on the ability of human beings, thanks to the lack of instincts, of referring not only to sets of facts but to their negation. The short–circuit of stimulus (i.e. not having what would be due) is the primitive germ of consciousness of negation; cfr. Plessner, Die Stufen, 340. 197   Alsberg, Menschheitsrätsel, 129. 193

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sions] than in situations where no «decision» is to be made”.198 This might count as another aspect of lacking control over the conditions of our existence. As abovementioned, Blumenberg represents just the negative of Platonic ethics: if immoral action comes from ignorance, then human beings do structurally bad. 2) On the other hand, since the logic of life is its self-preservation; we are mainly our possibilities; and we have little time, our actions can be no other than egoistic. As long as we do not know in advance who we can get to be and what we will need for it;199 being this the most unavoidable “moral” command, because the human way of living consists of making real our possibilities;200 and having absolutely not enough time to succeed, every other human being logically turns out to be a rival.201 The main ethical problem is the existence of “a being with a limited lifetime and unlimited desires”.202 Against Kant, “because of the finitude of our life, we can afford no omission in achieving our goals”.203 Plato can say it is better bearing than doing injustice because he believes in immortality.204 Turning over Christian theology about sin,205 Blumenberg affirms that it was death that let sin have its way in the world and not the reverse.206 In this sense, the diabolic could be defined as “a concentrate of crafts and ruses to save time, to have more of the world. With a more abstract formulation: the world takes time”.207 Thereafter ethical and technological fields would be alien to one another: no moral law can     200   201  

Blumenberg, Selbstverständnis, 67. Blumenberg, Vollzähligkeit, 320. Blumenberg, Begriffe, 195–6. Hans Blumenberg, Matthäuspassion (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988), 95. 202   Blumenberg, Lebenszeit, 71–2. 203   Blumenberg, Arbeit, 285. 204   Gorgias 524a–b. From my viewpoint, myth of judgment after death functions as the hidden base for all his argumentation in this dialogue. 205   Cfr. Romans, 5, 12. 206   Blumenberg, Arbeit, 285. 207   Blumenberg, Lebenszeit, 73. 198 199

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prevent human beings doing everything they can, “because we can’t stand being doubtful about whether we really can or not”.208 This is not, however, a justification for every kind of behavior; along with these reflections, Blumenberg defends the protection of community, just as a condition of the existence of individual life.209 We find here and again the ambivalence that permeates human existence for Blumenberg. In this paper we have tried and displayed the main concepts of Blumenberg’s view of rhetoric. It seems to us that rhetoric plays a crucial role in Blumenberg’s philosophy, since it makes apparent the ontological meaning of the Blumenbergian metaphorology’s anthropological turn. This ontological reference comes in turn to light through the discussion with Plato and Aristotle’s concepts of rhetoric. Going into more detail, we have tried to emphasize the Blumenbergian anthropological transformation of ontology by loading the classical features of rhetoric with ontological meaning. Following this argument, we have examined the ideas of human being as animal symbolicum and human beings’ double-faced temporality, drawing as a result both the concepts of rhetoric as art of delaying and as solution for not having enough time. This analysis has positioned us adequately in order to understand the ethical consequences deriving from the Blumenbergian ontological and anthropological comprehension.

  Blumenberg, Vollzähligkeit, 214. Italic by Blumenberg.   Hans Blumenberg, “Ist eine philosophische Ethik gegenwärtig

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möglich?”, Studium Generale 6 (1953) 3, 178.