Benjamin Specht

Mit Texten von Rainer Godel, Benjamin Specht, Sarah Goeth, Peter Schnyder, Eva Johach, Philip Ajouri, Nicolas Pethes, Nicholas Saul u.v.a. [...]

In the late 19th century, the discourse of ›metaphor‹ expands – often times metaphorically itself – from the realm of traditional rhetoric to aethesiophysiology, psychology, epistemology and cultural anthropology. This development may indicate the general capacities of metaphor to explore new concepts and to put the existing ›system of knowledge‹ of a specific period in ›motion‹. It may support intellectual exploration by providing a novel nomenclature to new thought (e.g.Nietzsche’s critique of knowledge), and it often serves to project sketchy mental notions which may eventually help to conceptualize a ›yet unknown‹ domain (e. g. Freud’s psychoanalysis). Moreover, metaphor may also stimulate the genesis and the structuring of academic disciplines in their entirety (e. g. Steinthal’s and Lazarus’s ›Völkerpsychologie‹). And it is a means as well to ensure cohesiveness and stability of a period’s system of knowledge as to prepare and to conduct general systemchange (e.g. Mauthner’s ›critique of language‹).