Political strata and the flows of history: Hans Freyer’s conservatism in light of its metaphors

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article addresses the political nature of history and the historical aspects of politics in the work of the German conservative theorist Hans Freyer. Freyer’s view of history is inseparable from his political theory because both were metaphorically conditioned. Suggesting the relevance of political metaphors as argumentation rather than mere rhetoric or cognitive basis, this article engages critically with Freyer’s metaphors of history as flow upon and within political grounds, occasionally altered by volcanic revolutionary outbursts that redirected, accelerated, or restrained the flow. By this metaphorical structure, Freyer was able to merge both conservative and radical elements in his political and historical theory, to retain the political nature of history without assuming supra-historical goals, and, finally, to readjust, rather than discard, the geological and aquatic metaphors in his eventual transition from radical to moderate conservatism. With the case of Freyer, the article exemplifies how the functional analysis of political metaphors discloses otherwise inaccessible information regarding the aims, argumentative structures, and strong or weak points in the work of individual political theorists or groups and thus serves exegetical ends in political theory and intellectual history.