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Metaphors We Live By

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

David E. Cooper
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Extract

Aside from aperçus of Kant, Nietzsche, and of course, Aristotle, metaphor has not, until recently, received its due. The dominant view has been Hobbes': metaphors are an ‘abuse’ of language, less dangerous than ordinary equivocation only because they ‘profess their inconstancy’.

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Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 18: Philosophy and Practice , September 1984 , pp. 43 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1984

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References

1 Leviathan (Blackwell, 1960), 25.Google Scholar

2 Critique of Judgement (Hafner, 1966), 198.Google Scholar

3 ‘La mythologie blanche’, in Marges de la Philosophie (Editions Minuit, 1972).Google Scholar

4 ‘Metaphor’, in Models and Metaphors (Cornell, 1962).Google Scholar

5 Quoted in Fontanier, P., Les Figures du Discours (Flammarion, 1977), 157.Google Scholar For linguists' researches into the incidence of metaphor, see Sampson, G., Making Sense (Oxford University Press, 1980) Ch. IV.Google Scholar

6 See especially ‘Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbance’, in Selected Writings, II (Mouton, 1971).Google Scholar

7 ‘Über Wahrheit und Luge im aussermoralischen Sinn’, Werke, III (Ullstein, 1979) 314.Google Scholar

8 University of Chicago, 1980. The lines quoted are from pp. 211, 239, 3 and 234.

9 See, for example, Searle, J. R., ‘Metaphor’, in Metaphor and Thought, Ortony, A. (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 1979).Google Scholar

10 It is hard to agree, therefore, with Quirk and Greenbaum's claim that temporal prepositions have a ‘metaphorical connection’ with place ones (A University Grammar of English (Longman, 1973), 153).Google Scholar

11 Op. cit., 6.

12 Hobbes, , op. cit., 19Google Scholar; Fontanier, , op. cit., 160.Google Scholar

13 Op. cit., 33.

14 See, for instance, Davies, M., ‘Idiom and Metaphor’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1982)Google Scholar, and my comment on this in Mind (1984).Google Scholar

15 See Olsen, S. H., ‘Understanding Literary Metaphors” in Metaphor: Problems and Perspectives, Miall, D. (ed.) (Harvester, 1982).Google Scholar

16 For this ‘passion de parler’ and a rousing attack on the idea of speech as first and foremost, intentional speech acts, see Merleau-Ponty, M., especially Signes (Gallimard, 1960), 24ff.Google Scholar

17 I borrow this phrase from a stimulating paper by Cohen, Ted, ‘Metaphor and the Cultivation of Intimacy’ in On Metaphor, Sacks, S. (ed.) (University of Chicago, 1979).Google ScholarPubMed I also borrow from him the phrase ‘friends of metaphor’ and the fruitful comparison with jokes.

18 Rhetorica, Works IX (Oxford University Press) 1404b.Google Scholar

19 Although I have joined in the usual talk of metaphor's ‘conveying’ something that the listeners ‘understand’, I agree with those writers, especially Sperber and Wilson, who find it misleading and prefer talking of what metaphors ‘evoke’. See, for example, their paper, ‘Pragmatics’, Cognition 10 (1981).Google Scholar

20 ‘Rudiments de rhétorique cognitive’, Poetique 23 (1975), 414.Google Scholar

21 Reddy, M., ‘The Conduit Metaphor’, in Ortony (ed.), op. cit.Google Scholar

22 Op. cit., 406.

23 Ästhetik, I (Aufbau-Verlag, 1976). 393.Google Scholar

24 Sein und Zeit (Niemeyer, 1979), 138–139.Google Scholar

25 Op. cit.

26 Ibid., 394.