- Title Pages
- Hans Blumenberg: An Introduction
-
1 The Linguistic Reality of Philosophy -
2 World Pictures and World Models -
3 “Secularization” -
4 The Concept of Reality and the Theory of the State -
5 Preliminary Remarks on the Concept of Reality -
6 Light as a Metaphor for Truth -
7 Introduction to Paradigms for a Metaphorology -
8 An Anthropological Approach to the Contemporary Significance of Rhetoric -
9 Observations Drawn from Metaphors -
10 Prospect for a Theory of Nonconceptuality -
11 Theory of Nonconceptuality -
12 The Relationship between Nature and Technology as a Philosophical Problem -
13 “Imitation of Nature” -
14 Phenomenological Aspects on Life-World and Technization -
15 Socrates and the objet ambigu -
16 The Essential Ambiguity of the Aesthetic Object -
17 Speech Situation and Immanent Poetics -
18 The Absolute Father -
19 The Mythos and Ethos of America in the Work of William Faulkner -
20 The Concept of Reality and the Possibility of the Novel -
21 Pensiveness -
22 Moments of Goethe -
23 Beyond the Edge of Reality -
24 Of Nonunderstanding -
25 Unknown Aesopica -
26 Advancing into Eternal Silence - Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
“Imitation of Nature”
“Imitation of Nature”
Toward a Prehistory of the Idea of the Creative Being (1957)
- Chapter:
- (p.316) 13 “Imitation of Nature”
- Source:
- History, Metaphors, Fables
- Author(s):
Hans Blumenberg
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
This chapter reviews Hans Blumenberg's “'Imitation of Nature': Toward a Prehistory of the Idea of the Creative Being” (1957). In this work, Blumenberg traces the consequences of the changes in the concept of nature for technology and art through the historical reevaluation of the concept of mimesis. According to Aristotle, “human skill (technē) either completes what nature is incapable of completing or imitates nature.” This dual definition is closely tied to the double meaning of the concept of “nature” as a productive principle (natura naturans) and produced form (natura naturata). It is easy to see, however, that the overlapping component lies in the element of “imitation.” Nature and “art” are structurally identical: the immanent characteristics of one sphere can be transposed onto the other. This idea was then established as fact when tradition shortened the Aristotelian formulation to ars imitator naturam, as Aristotle himself had already expressed it.
Keywords: Hans Blumenberg, imitation, nature, creative being, technology, art, mimesis, Aristotle, technē
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- Title Pages
- Hans Blumenberg: An Introduction
-
1 The Linguistic Reality of Philosophy -
2 World Pictures and World Models -
3 “Secularization” -
4 The Concept of Reality and the Theory of the State -
5 Preliminary Remarks on the Concept of Reality -
6 Light as a Metaphor for Truth -
7 Introduction to Paradigms for a Metaphorology -
8 An Anthropological Approach to the Contemporary Significance of Rhetoric -
9 Observations Drawn from Metaphors -
10 Prospect for a Theory of Nonconceptuality -
11 Theory of Nonconceptuality -
12 The Relationship between Nature and Technology as a Philosophical Problem -
13 “Imitation of Nature” -
14 Phenomenological Aspects on Life-World and Technization -
15 Socrates and the objet ambigu -
16 The Essential Ambiguity of the Aesthetic Object -
17 Speech Situation and Immanent Poetics -
18 The Absolute Father -
19 The Mythos and Ethos of America in the Work of William Faulkner -
20 The Concept of Reality and the Possibility of the Novel -
21 Pensiveness -
22 Moments of Goethe -
23 Beyond the Edge of Reality -
24 Of Nonunderstanding -
25 Unknown Aesopica -
26 Advancing into Eternal Silence - Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
