Scope and Contents This is a critical essay translated from the German to French and English on the author's beliefs about a book. He discusses the book as metaphor by offering the following classification: 1) Book = metaphor for the whole of experience (vehicle); 2) Text = metaphor for the entire information of the creation (content); 3) Readability = metaphor for the experience (reception); 4) Reading = metaphor for the art of appropriation, active participation. Book of Nature = presence; Similarity = the world of language and thought is by analogy connected to the nature of things; it indexes everything which exists in God's accountancy (Divine Book). Book of Enlightenment = Autonomy; Classification = Reason constitutes itself in the gesture of keeping its distance from the world. Difference and identity are related by systems of measurement and order. It is the organ of meaning that endows subject (Bourgeois Book). Book of Emptiness and Speechlessness = Absence; 'Verwindung" = Transcending...