Conceptual Coinage, the Untranslatable, and the Role of Metaphors in the Work of Hans Blumenberg

Abstract

Abstract One would suspect that someone who was so interested on conceptual coinage, would be less interested on that which cannot be translated. Actually, both dimensions are so interconnected that, it is only because of learning about how to coin concepts, that we are able to understand how much is left out from the concept, and how, if it possesses some sort of ambiguity, we may need other tools such as metaphors, which allow more space for the untranslatable. Ambiguity is their main feature. Thanks to Hans Blumenberg’s work, we can actually learn to understand what is left in between metaphors, and in the process of how some of them can turn them into concepts, while others remain forever as metaphors. In the historical spaces of the before and the after, and only by acknowledging that the pre-conceptual lays in our lifesworld (Lebenswelt), and which is also the frame for these untraceable dimensions. We can say that there is only an indirect way to approach these spaces and how we can work them is through the connection between language and history. Explaining this specific dynamic is the subject of this paper.