Alexander Friedrich

Coldness is integral to modernity—our reality is based on its control. The quest to conquer extreme cold spurred the polar expeditions and the scientific race to absolute zero; with cryotechnology, cold became a fundamental cultural condition. Modern cryogenic cultures have gained the power to profoundly manipulate the temporality of life. However, since this power comes at the expense of those who suffer most from global warming, our cultural relationship to artificial cold must be reconsidered. mehr

Was leicht übersehen, gerne unterschätzt oder gemeinhin übergangen wird, ist deswegen nicht gleich marginal. Und wenn doch, sollten wir unser Augenmerk gerade deswegen darauf richten. Denn die ... mehr

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. mehr