Abstract

This paper reads Blumenberg’s posthumously published study Die nackte Wahrheit as a book left unfinished because a major, if not central, chapter was still pending: a chapter on Husserl’s metaphor of a dress of ideas (“Ideenkleid”) that veils the lifeworld. Arguing that Blumenberg aimed at a phenomenological foundation for his metaphorology based on his critique and inversion of the Husserlian concept of lifeworld, the article reveals resulting tensions between Blumenberg’s late and early theoretical approaches to a theory of metaphor that sought, but did not find, a solution in his own theory of lifeworld, which remained unfinished as well.