Olaf Jäkel: "Kant, Blumenberg, Weinrich" (1999)

In this article, Olaf Jäkel quotes passages from Kant, Cassirer, Whorf, and Blumenberg that preempts many of the core ideas in cognitive metaphor theory. He then goes on to discuss the theory of Harald Weirich, which is almost a notational variant of the original cognitive metaphor theory.

Interstingly, Weinrich makes the following reservation:

Is every metaphor rooted in an image field [= a conceptual metaphor]? That would be too much to claim. In fact, every word can take on metaphorical meaning, every matter can be addressed metaphorically, and imagination knows no bounds. Arbitrary, isolated metaphors are always possible. But they are rarer than some may think, and what is more important, usually they are not successful in [i.e., adopted by] the linguistic community. (p. 19)

The quote comes from his 1958 article "Münze und Wort: Untersuchungen an einem Bildfeld."