Talk held at the conference: "Dignity, Respect, and Self-Respect. Ancient, Modern, and Contemporary Positions" at the University of Bologna, May 2014.

1. On Absolute Metaphors:
The Dignity of Man
Dr.Thomas Wachtendorf
wachtendorf@akademiephilosophie.de
Research center Erkenntnis, University of Oldenburg, Germany
Dignity, Respect, and Self-respect.Ancient, Modern, and Contemporary Positions
University of Bologna, Italy

2. Thomas Wachtendorf
1. Dignity of Man: meaningful concept or empty
formula?
2. The meaning of Dignity of Man
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute Metaphors
5. Dignity of Man as Absolute Metaphor
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man

3. Thomas Wachtendorf
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man
Dignity of Man: Meaningful concept or empty
formula?
Opponents say:
• Dignity of man has no meaning, because there is
no object it refers to
• It is a solely rhetorical concept
• It is a religious concept
!
Proponents reply:
• Dignity of man has a explicable meaning
• It is a regulative concept
• It is transcendental necessary and therefore
irreducible
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor

4. Thomas Wachtendorf
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man
The meaning of dignity of man
!
• Ancient times (before Christ): honour, the
task to live your life in accordance with the
common habits
• Modern age (beginning with Christ): essential
feature
• Nowadays: mixture of both, whereas the core
of this notion is its essentiality, a thought
mostly influenced by Kant and his concept auf
autonomy. Moreover: not-humiliation.
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor

5. Thomas Wachtendorf
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man
Meaning as use
!
Not every concept needs a concrete reference nor
must it refer to an object.According to Ludwig
Wittgenstein, meaning arises from how a word is
used within the language:
!
„For a large class of cases — though not for all —
in which we employ the word ‚meaning‘ it can be
defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the
language.“ (PI, §43)
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor

6. Thomas Wachtendorf
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man
This claim leads to some important consequences:
!
„Explanations come to an end somewhere.“ (PI, §1)
!
Where is this end?
„Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence,
comes to an end; but the end is not certain
propositions’ striking us immediately as true, i.e., it
is not a kind of seeing on our part, it is our acting
which lies at the bottom of a language game.“ (OC,
§204)
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor

7. Thomas Wachtendorf
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man
What is a language game?
„I shall also call the whole, consisting of language
and the actions into which it is woven, the
‚language-game’.“ (PI, §7)
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor

8. Thomas Wachtendorf
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man
This leads to the concept of a rule:
!
„And is there not also the case where we play and
—make up the rules as we go along? And there is
even one where we alter them—as we go
along.“ (PI, §83)
!
Rules in this sense are not true or false. But,
nevertheless they define the way we interact with
the world and, moreover, how we see the world:
Rules define our world picture (Weltbild).
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor

9. Thomas Wachtendorf
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man
World Picture (Weltbild)
„But I did not get my picture of the world by
satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it
because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is
the inherited background against which I distinguish
between true and false.“ (OC § 94)
„The propositions describing this world-picture
might be part of a kind of mythology.And their role
is like that of rules of a game; and the game can be
learned purely practically, without learning any
explicit rules.“ (OC § 95)
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor

10. Thomas Wachtendorf
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man
What about mythology?
!
Wittgenstein claims that mythology, in spite of itself
not being true or false is „the inherited background
against which I distinguish between true and false.“
Nevertheless, this mythology has a certain
structure which can – in part – be described as
metaphors.
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor

11. Thomas Wachtendorf
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man
Hans Blumenberg claims that this mythology (the
specific world picture) is structured by metaphors
which influence the way one thinks:
!
„Metaphorology seeks to come on the
substructure of thinking, the underground, the
systematic crystallization’s nutrient solution, but
metaphorology will also make comprehensible, by
which ‚courage’ the mind is ahead of itself when
using certain pictures and how by having courage to
make certain assumptions its own history
develops.“
(Hans Blumenberg, Paradigms for a metaphorology)
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor

12. Thomas Wachtendorf
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man
Preliminary remark:
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson pointed out (in:
Metaphors we live by) that beyond their rhetorical
and poetical functions metaphors have the ability to
illustrate fundamental cognitive structures.They
influence the way we act and think.
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor

13. Thomas Wachtendorf
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man
A specific kind of metaphor is called Absolute
Metaphor, a term invented by Hans Blumenberg in
1960 in Paradigms of a metaphorology.
Absolute metaphors while lying on the bottom of
our world picture thereby generate reality, because
they make us see the world in a certain way.
!
The other way around, metaphors inform us about
a human’s lifeworld (his reality).
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor

14. Thomas Wachtendorf
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man
Why can’t Absolute Metaphors be identified and
refuted as unprecise by science?
!
Because an important part of one’s lifeworld are
existential questions!
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor

15. Thomas Wachtendorf
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man
Existential questions can not be answered by
science, because they reach beyond science’s
theoretically structured cognitive capacity (science
and theories are finite as well as humans are.
Existential questions aim at the infinite).
Absolute metaphors say something about what
science can not explain.
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor

16. Thomas Wachtendorf
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man
Absolute Metaphors answer
• Questions of totality, e.g. :What is time? What
is the meaning of life?
• Questions of orientation, e.g.: How to deal
with murderers? How to find out what is true?
!
Absolute Metaphors "structure a world, they
represent the whole of reality, which neither can be
experienced nor overlooked.Their content
determines behaviour like a landmark one is guided
by." (Blumenberg)
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor

17. Thomas Wachtendorf
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man
Thus,Absolute Metaphors deliver answers where
science fails to do so.This is why they are a
sufficient pattern of explanation in an important
sense.
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor

18. Thomas Wachtendorf
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man
Explanations come to an end somewhere, because
all explanations must rest on some ground, which
itself cannot be explained. Otherwise there would
be another explanation for this ground and so on.A
circulus vitiosus would be the consequence.
Absolute Metaphors take over the role of a
ultimate grounding science can not deliver.They in
this sense represent a world picture.
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor

19. Thomas Wachtendorf
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man
To be justified to call a concept an absolute
metaphor three conditions must be fulfilled:
!
1. The concept needs a content (intension)
2. This content must aim at totality
3. The concept must be suitable to give
orientation
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor

20. Thomas Wachtendorf
On Absolute Metaphors:The Dignity of Man
The concept of the dignity of man fulfills all of the
three conditions:
1. The concept has a content
2. The concept tries to say something about what
humans are
3. The concept thereby helps to find a way how to
deal with people
!
Therefore, dignity of man can be considered as an
Absolute Metaphor.Absolute Metaphors are
transcendentally necessary for organizing social
coexistence.They are necessary for pragmatic
reasons.
1. Meaningful concept or
empty formula?
2. The meaning of dignity
3. Meaning as use
4. Absolute metaphors
5. Dignity as Absolute
Metaphor

21. On Absolute Metaphors:
The Dignity of Man
Dr.Thomas Wachtendorf
wachtendorf@akademiephilosophie.de
Research center Erkenntnis, University of Oldenburg, Germany
Dignity, Respect, and Self-respect.Ancient, Modern, and Contemporary Positions
University of Bologna, Italy