After Blumenberg's early programmatic writing from 1960, "Paradigms for a Metaphorology," has become accessible again, here follows the ensemble of aesthetic and metaphorological writings from the 1950s to the 1970s, which center around the paradigms. In these small writings, what was elaborated in the major works of the 1970s and 1980s regarding the legitimacy of modernity from 1966 is presented in an extremely concise and pointed form. They not only hold historical significance for the author's early fame; they also reveal the core of the unleashed "authentic potential.".