Shipwreck With Spectator - 9780262518918

This elegant essay exemplifies Blumenberg's ideas about the ability of the historicalstudy of metaphor to illuminate essential aspects of being human. Originally published in the sameyear as his monumental Work on Myth, Shipwreck with Spectator traces the evolution of the complex ofmetaphors related to the sea, to shipwreck, and to the role of the spectator in human culture fromancient Greece to modern times.The sea is one of humanity's oldest metaphors for life, and a seajourney, Blumenberg observes, has often stood for our journey through life. We all know the rolethat shipwrecks can play in this journey, and at some level we have all played witness to others'wrecks, standing in safety and knowing that there is nothing we can do to help, yet fixedcomfortably or uncomfortably in our ambiguous role as spectator.Through Blumenberg's seeminglyinexhaustible knowledge of letters, from ancient texts through nineteenth-century reminiscences andmodern speeches, we see layer upon layer revealed in the meaning humans have given to thesemetaphors; and in this way we begin to understand what metaphors can do that more straightforwardmodes of expression cannot.This edition of Shipwreck with Spectator also includes "Prospect for aTheory of Nonconceptuality," an essay that recounts the evolution of Blumenberg's ideas aboutmetaphorology in the years following his early manifesto "Paradigms for a Metaphorology."