Metaphors in modern and contemporary philosophy

Since Hans Blumenberg developed his metaphorology, there has been a constantly growing interest among philosophers in the function of metaphorical language in philosophy. In this tradition of a positive approach to philosophical metaphors, the publication of Ralf Konersmann's Wörterbuch der philosophischen Metaphern (2007, third edition 2011) is a landmark, that testifies to the actuality and importance of the problem of the relationship between philosophical rationality and its roots in pre-philosophical language and concepts. Konersmann's dictionary is the first attempt ever to cover in a lexical form the field of philosophical metaphors. The present collection of articles is intended to illustrate, in the wake of Blumenberg and Konersmann, the idea that metaphors have their own irreplaceable role to play in philosophy, as the expression of the finite, provisional and contingent character of our thinking. In the first, systematic part of the book different approaches to the role of philosophical metaphors in general are proposed from different angles. In the second and third part some selected metaphors in the history of modern and contemporary philosophy are discussed.