ABSTRACT
The Latin term parabola has two meanings. It means a parable or story, a teaching illustrated by plot or character. And as parabola it means a line that departs from a fixed point, extending itself to a climax and coming back to another point, distant but on the same plane. Three books from the twentieth century on the history of philosophy each illustrate a parabola in both senses of the word. The first of these works was published by Bernhard Groethuysen in 1931 as Philosophical Anthropology. The second book among contemporary works on the history of philosophy tracing parabolas is Karl Lowith's From Hegel to Nietzsche , first published in 1941. The third book outlining the history of Western thought under the guise of a parable/parabola is Michel Foucault's work The Words and the Things, published in 1966.
