241

PHILOSOPHY, METAPHOR, AND TASTE

WILLIAM CAMERON

The metaphor of Being as an infinite sphere has fascinated Western thinking since its earliest textural stirring. Borges begins a brief essay recounting the development of this figure by suggesting that his work be seen as but a chapter in a much larger work, one that would be a "universal history." And he suggests what might be taken as the clue that would unify this enormous project. "Perhaps," he says, "universal history may be the history of a few metaphors. ''1 What would be involved if this were so?

A universal history would tell the story of what has transpired at the site upon which all structures of meaning have been constructed. This site's universality would consist in its being the ground of the fundamental con- tinuity of meaning through which a tradition can arise. Following Borges, the structures built upon this site would be metaphoric at their core. Yet, were it possible to deconstruct them and lay bare their metaphoric frame, a problem would emerge the nature of which would pose a central difficulty for this project's success. This problem can be stated simply. The deconstruction, too, would have to be understood as being a moment of universal history, for the site of all structures of meaning, including that of metaphorical analysis, would be metaphoric. Thus, this deconstruction would be such only in a sense. In place of all previous structuring, this movement would build accord- ing to the metaphor of metaphor.

Two complementary aspects of the project of a universal history as a history of metaphor reveal the crux of this difficulty. One has to do with the notion of "metaphor" itself, the other with the claim to universality that such a history makes. Derrida isolates what is problematical in this project. He points out that, first of all, "metaphor remains in all its essential features a classical element of philosophy, a metaphysical concept. It is therefore involved in the field which it would be the purpose of a general 'metapho.- rology' to subsume." Thus, and second, "if we wanted to conceive and classify all the metaphorical possibilities of philosophy, there would always be one metaphor that would be excluded and remain outside the sys tem. . . [viz.] the metaphor of metaphor. ''2 What is the force of this criticism?

A "metaphorology" would present itself as the proper account of the nature of structures of meaning. As such, it would seem to be opposed to the

1 Jorge Luis Borges, "Pascal's Sphere," in Other Inquisitions, tr. Ruth L. C, Simms (New York, 1966), p. 5.

z Jacques Derrida, "White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy," tr. F. C. T. Moore, New Literary History (1974), 18.

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traditional logos of universal understanding that is called "philosophy." A universal metaphorology would insist on showing, if only implicitly, that philosophy holds no essentially privileged place in the field of thought, and that it is, in fact, only the exploration of a system of metaphors among several that are possible. Nevertheless, the antagonism between metaphorical and philosophical speech, from which metaphorology would receive its meaning as radical and destructive, is possible only on the basis of a philosophical distinction. To understand all thought as metaphorical is to have initiated a profound critique of the tradition of univocal speech. This critique compre- hends itself as a basic de-centering or deconstruction of the classical interplay of speech, truth, and Being. Yet, on these terms, it would seem that a metaphorology, or a universal history as the history of metaphors, must fail. This undertaking would have to use a t e r m - "metaphor" - whose meaning is rooted in this tradition. "Metaphor" is maintained in opposition to un- ivocality by this tradition. To use the concept of metaphor is to enter into a system of significant oppositions called "metaphysics." In metaphysics, "metaphor" signifies by being opposed to what is determined to be non- metaphorical and denotative. Without metaphysics the notion of metaphor would seem to be unintelligible. Yet it is precisely the primacy of this system that a metaphorology seeks by nature to depose. In this sense, the analysis of metaphor as a universal framework for understanding would seem to be self- vitiating.

Moreover, if a universal history as a history of metaphors is to be both radical and universal, then it may exclude nothing from its reinterpretative work. Metaphorology must, therefore, be reflexive. But can the metaphor of metaphor withstand such scrutiny? It would seem that in including itself within its own purview a radical metaphorology confronts insurmountable difficulties.

A universal history as the history of metaphors would, of course, be a kind of speech. Since it would purport to be saying something true, it would be subject to the general conditions required for there to be any true speech. A speech put forward as true purports to be saying something about something on the assumption that there is some more or less fixed state of affairs to speak about. Nevertheless, were a metaphorology to accede to this, it could not recognize in itself a true metaphor. Were it to do so, it would have to admit that the metaphor of metaphor is a metaphor, in which case the grounds of ~ense would have to be understood as conditional. And were these grounds, as the site of sense, truly conditional, then no final resemblance could be expressed. Yet it is through this sort of finality that "metaphor" has been empowered traditionally. The consequence here seems plain: if radical met- aphorology is in some sense true, then the grounds of all discourse would be but an infinite play of mirrors. They would be a set of references, infinite and unfounded, refering ultimately to nothing fixed. This consequence leads to the conclusion that the project for a universal history could not, then, be put forward as a correct or true account. It could be seen only as a speech vying with other speeches.

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In order to save itself from this fate, it would seem that "metaphor" must be explicable in non-metaphorical, denotative terms. In order for it not to be non-sense, the metaphor of metaphor would have to elude itself. Were it elusive in this way, however, then 'metaphor' would be only a misleading, indeed, an incorrect name for the traditional grounds of sense. Hence, if it is consistent, a universal history of the sort proposed would seem to be im- possible as a meaningful speech. And if it recognizes this, then either it falls into inconsistency or is simply false.

Thus, it would seem that by introducing the notion of "metaphor" the very metaphysics a metaphorology seeks to displace is instituted. Again, it is Derrida who detects the basic problem. " I f we read in a concept the hidden history of a metaphor, we are . . . putting our money on [a] symbolist con- ception of l anguage . . . : the link between the signifier and signified had to be and to remain, though buried, one of natural necessity, of analogical partici- pation, and of resemblance. ''3 If metaphor is meaningful only within a metaphysical context, a context of natural, determinate, and given order that underlies the elaboration of resemblance, then the attempt to employ the concept of metaphor to overcome metaphysics seems futile. Nevertheless, in order to gauge the efficacy of such criticism, this inquiry must venture first to explore what would be involved in an explication of thought as metaphorical that would not be rooted in a system of oppositions bound together by natural resemblance. Only then can this investigation return to these attacks and see how well what it would propose has weathered them. Again, therefore, it must be asked: what would be involved if universal history were the history of a few metaphors? But to this question a proviso must be added: this history may not be understood as founded in an irreducible notion of resemblances that are "natural ."

Perhaps this inquiry should begin in earnest with the observation of one well-versed in metaphor. "The proliferation of resemblances," says Wallace Stevens, "extends an object. The point at which this process begins, or rather at which this growth begins, is the point at which ambiguity has been reached."4One might say that the object is extended when its grasp exceeds what could be called its natural reach. This happens when the object, seen in a certain way, bespeaks first of all, not its simple presence to sense or thought, but its interconnectedness with other things. It comes to be seen as a terminalin a network of relations, each of whose members becomes salient by "being like" the other members.

A network of resemblances is a network of suggestions. The object extends outward to encompass everything that it is like. The likeness of each to each, and each to all, becomes a kind of signifying. The object, and all to which it is related, grows by geometric bounds as the object gets understood to be, not a steadfast certainty, but something questionable. To be questionable is to be

3 Derrida, "White Mythology," 1 2 - 1 3 .

4 "Three Academic Pieces: I," in The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination (New York, 1951) p. 80.

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able to be questioned. When something can be questioned it has more to give than can be taken in at a glance or at a first reading. Something that is questionable is ambiguous. With regard to whatever is ambiguous there is always the matter of how its uncertainty is to be disspelled, or at least understood. Thus, one tries to situate the object for a direct approach by seeing what it is like that is already understood in some sense. To do this is to have moved into the realm of resemblances. This realm comes to speech in metaphor.

When it articulates the telling likeness or unlikeness of one thing to another, metaphoric speech understands the ambiguous X to be or not to be as another term is. The metaphor moves by means of the "as": X is under- stood as Y. But what underlies this search for semblance? What is the controlling figure through which a thing that gets understood and expressed as something can arise? Metaphors are signs. What they signify is the de- velopment of a metaphoric - that is, of a symbol. They are the marks of the symbol's ability to symbolize. A symbol can be defined here as a guiding figure of thought by means of which resemblance makes some sense. The ap- pearance of the symbol makes the metaphor possible. The symbol is a nexus of sense that is brought to expression and unfolded in metaphor. And so far as it can symbolize, the symbol's power limits what it also makes possible: the range of metaphor, the extent, as Stevens says, of "the proliferation of resemblances." The symbol limits what can be said.

It is in this way that universal history may be thought of as the history of a few metaphors. To the extent that thought would make sense of things it is under the sway of the symbol. To the extent that thought encounters things that do not, as it were, speak plainly for themselves, but which must instead be somehow understood, clarified, interpreted or decoded, thought is made possible from the first by the symbol. Symbolization prefigures a context through which thought can be guided. By this activity, thought finds itself in possession of ground rules for anticipating, and thus encountering, some- thing as something. Thus can there be the kind of thinking that Kant calls "ampliative." To amplify the meaning of a thing (to explain; account for, or interpret it) is to extend the field of a thing's resemblances. Such is the burden imposed by a language that would say something of a thing that is not bespoken by its simple presence. Thinking is the eliciting of a symbol's power to symbolize. It operates by exploring in metaphor the possibilities of the nexus of sense that is sometimes called a "world."

Philosophical thinking prides itself on being critical. Criticism is the move- ment of thought to new positions on the basis of a deconstruction. This is understood sometimes as "progress." Following what has been said, criticism would be a way in which a certain symbol is developed in metaphor. The dynamism of the principle that generates metaphoric development is, it seems, "taste." In what follows, the rationale for saying this will be exhibited through two examples. Each of them is central to what is understood by the term "philosophy." Philosophy would be a particular kind of thinking, expressed in a particular discourse. This means that it would pursue a

Philosophy, Metaphor, and Taste 245

particular symbolism. When seen f rom philosophy's coign of vantage, each is "aesthetic" through and through. The first is the assignment of elegance to the "really Real" as an essential trait to be mirrored in thought, and the in- terpretation of this elegance as grace or simplicity. This becomes manifest in a predilection for metaphors of fixed place, light, and vision. The second example is the final principle for judging that a doctrine or argument is worthy or unworthy of further elucidation and effort.

Each exemplifies a matter of taste. If, as Gadamer claims, 5 taste is defined negatively, by the discernment of tastelessness, then the history of philosophi- cal criticism is a history of taste. And the predilection for simplicity, and the identification of the elegant with the simple, is the best that this taste can do in justifying itself, or in publicizing its standard of sensibility. From this point of view, the current impasse that philosophy has reached by means of the radical critiques of rationality proffered by Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Feye- rabend and Derrida can be seen as the exhuastion of the store of metaphor through which reason can open up the world for thought. I f this is so, then an ever-increasing selectivity in philosophic taste can be invoked to account for this impasse. Taste, one might say, has narrowed itself until there is nothing left about which to discriminate.

It is an ancient and fundamental doctrine of rational thought that certainty about the existence of ultimate principles that guarantee rationality is not arrived at through argument. I t may be necessary to presuppose them if there is to be a certain kind of speech, 6 but this can be no guarantee of their reality. Ultimate principles cannot be the conclusions of arguments, lest they be in need of premises. These premises would have to be established prior to the authentification of these supposedly ultimate principles. This is the circularity that is expressed in the skeptic's figure of the wheel. Since "ul t imacy" and "derivativeness" are incompatible notions fundamentally, the ultimate prin- ciples presupposed in all rational discourse, which enable thought to proceed rather than double back endlessly upon itself, must be "unconditioned."

Nevertheless, so long as these principles are only presupposed, and the attack on skepticism amounts only to a charge of formal contradiction, the wheel's motion is unperturbed. I f the skeptic is willing to be pyrrhic his thought can bear the burden of formal contradiction. This is the price that must be paid for bringing down the structure of coherence that the formalist doctrine proposes. The skeptic is never dissuaded by antinomies, and may find that contradiction reflects back on the adequacy of the doctrine that disclaims

5 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, tr. Anon. (New York, 1975), p. 35. 6 Plato's Parmenides can serve as an example of this. There the old philosopher tells Socrates

that if"a man refuses to admit that forms of things exist or to distinguish a definite form in every case, he will have nothing on which to fix his thought, so long as he will not allow that each thing has a character which is always the same, and in so doing he will completely destroy the significance of all discourse." (135c)

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them. ~ Somehow it must be shown that these principles are self-subsistent and "real." A way must be found, that is, to encounter them. How does one encounter the unconditioned? Quite simply, one sees it, "with the mind's eye." Yet this is no mere seeing. I t is nothing so tolerant and circumstantial. This seeing is discriminating. One can see an ultimate principle, or "intuit" it, only when one has trained to do so. One must put oneself in a position to see such things. Only in this way can one hope to break the awful, infinite motion of the skeptic's wheel.

So far as philosophy seeks to position itself in this way it seeks a regimen or a method. To be quaint: method is the education of the soul. By it, the soul learns to see; one learns, that is, to discern. As Plato shows clearly, and as few thereafter dispute, philosophic insight, which is the intuition of what is most fundamental, is an acquired disposition. In employing method one is learning to be predisposed. After the slave-boy's foray into reminiscence, Socrates tells Meno: "At present, these opinions, being newly aroused, have a dream- like quality. But if the same questions are put to him on many occasions, and in different ways, you can see that in the end he will have a knowledge on the subject as accurate as anybody's." (Meno, 85c) One learns to be predisposed to what is invariant throughout variation, regardless of the case. By practice, that is, one learns to discern well. This inclination toward what is truly worth one's while functions at first negatively. Through it, one is able to discriminate the unconditioned from the conditioned, the ultimate from the derived, the noble from the base, the real from the unreal, Being from non-Being.

As a particular mode of thought, philosophy seeks to realize itself in a speech that has something special to say. It tries to say what is most worth saying. Philosophic speech tries always to say what is, and to say how it is (how "things are") with what is. Speech assumes primacy among types of expression by being metaphorical. It is in the polyvalency of its signifiers, in their ability to signify by means of the tension that exists in speech between ambiguity and lucidity, that speech rises above the merely denotative and formally systematic. "The first thing to state," says Lacan, " . . . is that there is no meta-language. For it is necessary that all so-called meta-languages be presented to you in language. ''8 Language is always mediated by more language. Thus, in spite of its own best intentions, philosophic speech works always by interpreting. It suppresses the "like" of simile (X "is like" Y "is"). When it asserts, for example, that "Truth is correspondence between object and subject," or that "Understanding is enlightenment," or that "God is

7 See Gadamer, Truth andMethod, pp. 308f., 406f., 482ff. ; see also Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. John Macquarrie and James Robinson (New Yok, 1962), p. 272t". (German pagination, p. 229). Gadamer cites Plato's Seventh Letter, 343c-d, as a classical instance of the awareness of this situation.

8 Jacques Lacan, "Of Structure as an Inmixing of an Otherness Prerequisite to Any Subject Whatever," in The Strueturalist Controversy, ed. Louis Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Bal- timore, 1972), p. 188.

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eternal activity," philosophy moves into the headier and more profound region of metaphor. Here, the "seen as" becomes an "is. ''9

Philosophic discourse can coin concepts of its own - energeia, hyl~, eidos, esse, mind, truth - by plundering oridinary speech and reworking its gains in the forge of its peculiar tasks. But the meaning of such "terms" can be opened up and explored only metaphorically. "X" - the philosophic t e rm-" i s (like) Y (is)." This discourse is rooted in the speech from which it grows. Nevertheless, whatever precision one finds in philosophy's terms comes from philosophy's having prescinded from the circus atmosphere of everyday speech. Their definitional acuity comes from the restricted range of metaphors on which these terms rest. Such terms, then, become adumbrations of a symbol. By restricting the range of metaphors through which the symbol may be un- folded, these terms acquire their power to open up the world. The "like" gets denied'because philosophy may not speak suggestively, but only demonstrati- vely; it may not evoke, but only determine.

The determination to determine is philosophy's cardinal distinction. Its quest for univocity sets it off from other modes of thought. A simile is crude because it announces that what it says is tentative, approximate, and figu- rative. Its suppression leads to the emergeance of metaphor, which is both subtle and potent. Further, the restriction of thought to a certain range of metaphors bestows upon philosophy, as philosophy understands things, a greater power than is possible for any other mode of thought. This greater power results from a decisive seizure of the world through a forceful re- striction of articulable possibilities. By making things manageable what is germane gets determined.

How is this delimination of metaphoric possibility brought about? Again, it is Plato to whom one must turn for an answer. In his work the very conditions of philosophic thought, and of the discourse that is this thought's public self-consciousness, get established. An example would be his famous definition of"thinking" (dianoia). Plato avers that thinking is "the unuttered conversation of the soul with itself." (Sophist, 263e) One way to interpret this remark would be to say that thinking is akin to the opening up and resolving of matters, according to an order, that takes place between or among parties. The difference would be that when this happens "within" thinking itself, thought gets ordered by taking several parts at once. Plato, however, says more: thinking is conversing, only in silence; it is the bringing o f order

9 The distinction that is being used here is Aristotle's. In the Rhetoric he says: "The simile

[eikon] also is a metaphor; the difference is but slight. When the poet says of Achilles that he ' leapt on the foe as a lion,' this is a simile; when he says of him 'the lion leapt,' it is a metaphor - here, since both are courageous, he has transferred to Achilles the name of 'lion'." (III, 4, 1407b). This classical distinction sees metaphor as a compaction analogous, perhaps, to the enthymeme. To

make use of it here, however, is not to ascribe to it ultimate validity. It is founded in a theory of

discourse that is founded in a theory of understanding that is founded in an understanding of Being. As such, it begs to be criticized.

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t h rough sharing. The defini t ion asserts an " is ." I t surpasses all hes i tancy and qual if icat ion, and does so with consummate self-assurance.

W h a t has happened? The " l ike" has got ten suppressed. W i t h o u t such suppression, the " l ike" o f s imil i tude would engender an unending round of speech in which there is no final te rm tha t all else is like. In this s i tuat ion noth ing final cou ld be said, which would be to say no th ing at all. The suppress ion of the simile endows the copu la with new and u l t imate power. I t redetermines rad ica l ly wha t can be said, and is a decisive empower ing of metaphor . Thus, with P la to one way to think, or the exp lo ra t ion o f a cer tain symbol ism, wrenches f rom all the rest a special p lace for itself, and in doing so is aware o f wha t it is doing.

P la to ' s significance for the his tory of though t takes shape and exerts an influence th rough a Pa rmen idean insight tha t l imits the range o f wha t phi lo- sophy m a y say. This insight is the centra l p resuppos i t ion th rough which ph i lo sophy comes to speech: non-Being canno t be said; its " n a m e " is a misnomer , for there is no th ing to be named. 1 o P la to ' s achievement is to make Parmenides ' insight generative. Hencefor th , all speech abou t non-Being mus t be unde r s tood as speech abou t derivat ive forms of Being. 11 In this way ph i lo sophy comes to terms with the na ture o f o rd ina ry speech, and with its poet ica l exacerbat ion, as well. Ord ina ry speech says wha t can be said easily and thoughless ly because it ta lks abou t wha t is closest to us in our p r ima l forgetfulness, which is also cal led " ignorance . " W h a t is difficult and rare, and what is ph i losophica l , is to speak o f Being as such.

In this way is P la to ' s influence on though t decisive. I t restricts the range of m e t a p h o r tha t ph i lo sophy m a y use.The universal h is tory tha t Borges pro- poses would a t t empt to t rack down such restr ic t ions and their results. Still, it must be asked again: wha t cont ro ls and describes this range o f me tapho r? H o w is the mean ing of Being in this odd sort of speech cal led "ph i lo soph ica l " de te rmined for P la to and his fol lowers?

Serious though t is unconcerned by and large with mat ters of taste.12

lo In the Parmenides the philosopher says: " . . . If anything is not, you cannot say that it "has' anything or that there is anything 'of' it. Consequently, it cannot have a name or be spoken of, nor can there be any knowledge or perception or opinion of it. It is not named or spoken of, not an object of opinion or knowledge, not perceived by any creature." (142a)

Since the Eleatic Stranger seems to confute this view in the Sophist by arguing for the formal existence of "things that are not," (257b-259b) it would seem that the Platonic doctrine of non- Being can be summarized as follows. If'non-Being' is the name of the difference between things- "X is not Y" - as the Sophist suggests, then non-Being "is." It is the principle of plurality. If, however, 'non-Being' names what is contrary to Being as such, then the name cannot be uttered sensically. The non-Being of non-Being (as a Form) would be the ultimate, univocal sense of what-is. But where 'Being' denotes the "thatness" of things, 'non-Being' has no meaning. It denotes the unutterable absence of everything. It names, that is, nothing at all.

11 The divided line (Republie, 509cff.), with its eikasia or "iconic" thinking as the lowest of the soul's activities, makes this point graphic.

12 Perhaps the outstanding exception here is Kant's Critique of Judgment. Nevertheless, what is said there to be given through aesthetic taste is not knowledge, but the idea of universal

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Chacun a son goat, says common wisdom, and de gustibus non disputandum est. The history of taste is likewise ignored by the historiography of philo- sophy. Taste's development and features may belong properly to psycho- or socio-history, or to historical aesthetics, but they do not belong to philosophy when philosophy meditates upon its own development. Taste, it is thought, is too insignificant, too personal, too subjective and ephemeral a matter to be taken with utmost seriousness. It is a matter of convention, functioning at the interstice of sensation, place, and history.

This characterization of taste may seem to be hasty and naive. In point of fact, the notion of taste has a distinguished and, if not central, then important position in the unfolding of the complementary notions of "culture" and "value." Addison, for instance, defines "Mental Taste" as a "Degree of Refinement in the Intellectual Faculty" that, when applied, for example, to literary works, is seen to be " that Faculty of the Soul, which discerns to Beauties of the Author with Pleasure, and the Imperfections with Dislike." This "Faculty must in some degree be born with us," although it does not operate correctly unless it is cultivated and improved by one's "being con- versant among the Writings of the most Polite Authors," by "Conversation with men of Polite Genius," and by being "well versed in the Works of the best Criticks both Ancient and Modern. ' ' t3 Nevertheless, even if taste is under- stood as a proclivity for what is truly proper, its philosophical significance is minimal at best. It must be supported always by an order within which taste can be exercised, and of which taste is only a mode of detection, a psychologi- cal category. And, taste is always particularized, an in-born "faculty" present in some aubjects but not all. It is by no means a universal trait, and thus pales in comparison to reason. Taste may be judged to be veridical only because it can be confirmed independently. Consequently, though one's taste may be unerring, its infallibility is a private, not a public, treasure, and has no autonomous stature. Its pleasures may serve as exemplars for everyone else, but it cannot be taught with any hope of general success.

For this reason philosophy dismisses taste summarily. Clearly, if taste were exercised in philosophic matters, it would have to be denied any fundamental role in determining the meaning of these matters. I f objects that are philo- sophically "tasteful," that exhibit ultimate grace and are possessed of ul- timate value, are to be truly central to all else as its ground, its real nature, or (as with Aristotle) both at once, then the exercise of taste in philosophy must be denied. This must be the case because, when seen f rom within a certain exercise o f taste, taste works capriciously. Of course, it will be admitted that in

agreement, an agreement that is sensuous rather than conceptual. (Cf Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr2 Norman Kemp Smith [New York, 1965], B173, where there is a discussion of the importance of examples as judgmental guidelines.) In this regard, see Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 39-90.

i3 Joseph Addison, The Spectator, No. 409 (Thursday, June 19, 1712). The closeness of this view of taste to Aristotle's understanding of the origins ofphronOsis ought not to be overlooked. See the Nicomachean Ethics, I, 4, 1095b; II, 6, 1106b; III, 4, ll13a; and X, 5, 1176a.

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order for it to be taste, one's discernment must be coherent and consistent. But for taste itself there is no basis. Even the most rigorous, unerring taste is a function of the individual's particular circumstances, of his constitution, upbringing, and assiduity. Yet whatever is intensely personal is metaphysi- cally inconsequential, because it is capricious. Thus, there is a kind of taste that finds taste to be distasteful. This is philosophic taste. That for which it has no gusto is caprice- that is, non-Being. A certain exercise of taste must, by this exercise, first deny and then become oblivious to its own ground, It must consign its own ground to the doxic, to the field of mere credence, that is, to the abstruse particularity of the particular. Such taste engenders the critique of taste, and lays the foundation for the system of oppositions in which to denigrate taste. Chacun a son go~t: matters of taste cannot be disputed philosophically because they are so radically individual.

The case for saying this must be made on the basis of Plato's Parmenidean insight. When non-Being is ostracized and said to be unspeakable, a pre- ference is enacted. This preference is for simplicity. The Symposium seems best suited among the dialogues to bring this out.

Beauty itself is utterly simple. In this it is like Piety, Courage, Specific Excellence, Justice, and so on. But beautiful things - a human body, a rose, a sunset- are so suggestive of their Idea, of.the ground in which they are rooted, that with them the danger of error seems greatest. Here, one may lose oneself in the Herakleitean flux, not through mere confusion, but through delight. Hence, as with all such cases, the task with Beauty is to pierce through the exemplifications to what is exemplified. Nevertheless, in spite of its likeness to other cases, the nature of the danger with Beauty, of being distracted by beautiful things, affords dialectic a signal opportunity to enlighten.

This is so, perhaps, because of the clear role of the erotic in this situation. As with all such cases, dialectic can proceed only when the soul has put some distance between the workings of the soul and worldly things. This step- ping-back occurs usually through perplexity. For the Beautiful, however, there is a still more basic, and less easily dismissed, experience that opens a fissure through which thought may be freed to ascend to the ideal. This experience is dismay.

The origin of this dismay lies in the perception of time's most inexorable effects on the thing of beauty. These effects, disenchantment and decay, are the lot of all who are immersed in the movement of time. Nonetheless, it is what one makes of one's lot that is decisive. It is what one sees this fated decline as being that makes all the difference. Plato's dismay at the temporal leads him to see decline as a sign pointing beyond itself to "an everlasting loveliness which neither comes not goes, which neither flowers nor f a d e s . . . and is the same on every hand, the same then as now, here as there . . . . " (Symposium, 211 a) It leads him to seek what is without parts, what is simple and dependable. Denied in both its object and its exercise on the temporal plane, Eros turns to what can be a source of complete satisfaction. It turns to what can never elude proper courting, and to that of which it will never tire. Eros turns from flux to permanence. One should pursue only what endures.

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This can never be a pursuit of complexity. Something is complex to the extent that it is given always partially, incompletely, and, at bottom, un- certainly. Eros' proper object, through which it can do its work (ergon) with excellence (aretO), must be simple. It must withhold nothing of itself. This is the mark by which something is judged to be whole. Something simple is what it is fully and without reservation. The simple is what is wholly worth our trust.

But in what sense is it "worthy"? Something has "worth" if it satisfies us. A thing has ultimate worth when it is the source of ultimate satisfaction. What, then, could sate fully the longing of Eros? This could be discovered only after arduous and thorough education. After such education one may assert jus- tifiably that the satisfactory is, as we say, what is "to our taste." But what does this mean? If it is by taste that one discriminates, then "taste" names the grounds for one's predilections. Yet should these grounds prove to involve only "matters of taste," then what satisfies one's most demanding discrimi- nations is conditioned by the condition of taste.

For philosophy this is nothing at all. Taste, so far as it is ever considered, is thought to abide at the brink of non-Being. It devolves, it is thought, from the particular's radical particularity. Nonetheless, this insight- that of taste there can be no accounting, and that in its matters there can be no dispute - is disingenuous. There can be no philosophical accounting for taste because taste is at the root of philosophy's original and fruitful insight. This insight, by which philosophy is inaugurated as a mode of thought, says: non-Being cannot be said; whatever can be said, is; there can be something to say only of, and according to, what endures. What Platonic taste decides, what it has made of dismay, is precisely the meaning of Being for philosophy.

How does philosophic taste operate? How, that is, does it proceed to exhaust metaphor? It is plain that with the exaltation of simplicity thought's metaphoric store is depleted. (Philosophy would say that things have been cleaned up.) The utterly simple is "like" what can be taken in, once one knows how, "all at once." This being so, a huge stock of metaphors is proscribed for philosophy from the outset. If, as Derrida says, what it means to be cannot be said "except in ontic metaphor, ''14 then the direction that philosophic dis- course must take is plain. Metaphors of sound and smell, of taste and touch, are tied so firmly to the play of motion, change, and degree that there can be no question of their being able to approximate for thought its proper object. Thus, thought is restricted by criticism to metaphors of light and fixed place. 15 Only sight can encompass its object all at once. And even this can be so only when its object is simple, unmoving, unidimensional, and free of indices to other aspects of itself. Plato's heliotropism in the Republic's sixth book secures this limitation for all subsequent thinking that would be philo- sophical.

14 Derrida, "The Ends of Man," tr. Edouard Morot-Sir et al., Phil. Phen. Res. (1969), 53. 15 Critical analysis is made possible from the first by such metaphors. It then proceeds, on the

basis of the restrictions this metaphoric prefigures, to justify its right to criticize.

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As yet, simplicity has been discussed only as a principle, as the generative principle of philosophic taste. It is still abstract, awaiting application. Gadamer has pointed out that one finds the application of a principle of discernment in its being offended. (Were not the first movement of taste rejection, there would be no taste to speak of.) This principle can be seen at work in what Kant and the skeptics, at least since Lucian, have called the "scandal of philosophy." This scandal is the history of philosophical con- troversy. It exemplifies the predilection for simplicity, and is at the same time the process through which philosophy's metaphoric store is exhausted.

This can be made out best by turning to a specific case. Descartes' work can serve here, though that of others would do as well. To be more precise, let the issue be his attempted proof of God's existence in his third Meditation on first philosophy. The particulars of the proof are of little concern here. What is of primary concern is what is to be done with the proof itself.

Few of Descartes' readers, beginning with his contemporaries, seem sa- tiefied that this proof succeeds. There is no question but that its success is central to the project of rational reconstruction that Descartes espouses. Were there to be no proof of the existence of a truthful God, then certainty of only the isolated, instantaneous ego cogito would be a small vicrory, indeed, in the war on skepticism. Nevertheless, when scrutinized logically, with an eye to circularity, or according to the author's own canons of evidence, this dissatisfaction seems well warranted. Given this situation, the question is this: how is one's dissatisfaction to lead one to reject Descartes' claims for success? Put another way: how is one to decide to stop tinkering with Descartes' proof, t6 to stop, that is, making excuses for it? In sum: how does one decide, finally, that he has failed and is, on his own terms, no longer worth one's while?

Were there but time enough, equivocations could go on forever. The movement of generous readings and excuses has no natural end. One must therefore decide, and this can be done in one of two ways. One could decide that mining the Cartesian lode (or the Thomistic or Platonic or Kantian lode) ought not to be stopped because what one achieves by so doing is of inestim- able value. In this case, the central figure of the problematical doctrine is understood to be overdetermined. This means that there can be no conception of an end to what it can surrender. It is in this way that one may speak of a "perennial philosophy." The other alternative would be to decide that en- ough is enough. One is satisfied of the inadequacy of the Cartesian proof, and

16 The relationship between the brieoleur ("jack-of-all-trades") and his bricolage (tinkering), and the technical skills of the engineer, is discussed vis-gt-vis the mythic and scientific minds (pensdes) by Claude L6vi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, tr. Anon. (Chicago, 1966), pp. 16ff. The relevance of this distinction to lapens~ephilosophique is worth noting. Although the tinkerer may have talents of various sorts, he cannot be depended upon to "get things right" in the difficult cases. As will be seen, the philosopher, by possessing analytic tools, can avoid bricolage in matters of ultimate importance. In the light of Heidegger's claim that Technik is the global realization of metaphysical thinking, L6vi-Strauss' point takes on added significance.

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of the consequent failure of its project, and moves on. In this case, too, there is more to be done. Nevertheless, this is the case in a very different way than in the first option. In this case, Descartes, or St. Thomas, or Plato, or Kant is judged to have failed.

How is this failure made apparent? It is apparent when Descartes' position seems, by itself and standing on its own, to be fruitless. Yet how can this be seen? Why might one not be giving up too soon? Why not tinker some more? There is no reason to which one can repair in making such a decision. Because justification has no natural end, the standard that thought invokes is one that is ajudged by reason to be irrational or groundless, and this cannot be admitted. This standard might be called "putting an end to an unseemly business."

Why is it unseemly for philosophy to persevere in work that seems dubious? It is unseemly because of the way that philosophy understands itself. Truth ought never to be in need of tinkering or rationalization or equivocation. What is truly of value can make no continuous plea for excuses. That which must so plead asks too much of philosophic thought. The questionable status of a doctrine or stance points up the need to go further in seeking the complete and final speech. Whereas such a doctrine may be suggestive, or whereas its influence may be profound, still it cannot be accepted. For it asks for acceptance on blind faith, until at some point it can be seen how "things will turn out." It asks that apparent failure - circularity, ambiguity, or whatever - be taken for some sort of success. It asks, that is, to be given the benefit of the doubt. To accede to such a situation is offensive to rational sensibilities.

Thought pays a price in cultivating this ascetic taste. With each move to a new position thought pays in metaphoric coin. It leaves behind a certain set of possibilities of resemblance. As this depletes the store of metaphors that philosophic thought may use, its field of discourse becomes ever more con- stricted. There is less to be said, and fewer ways to say it. To think critically is to negate, that is, to reject what is incomplete or lacking in thorough coher- ence. Critical thinking will have nothing to do with what offends its well- honed sensibilities. What offends them - the tentative, the ambiguous, the radically incomplete - is what cannot be put up with any longer. Philosophy is in search of perfect elegance: elegance of thought, in harmony with objective e!egance. But as this search proceeds philosophy's possibilities become fewer and fewer. To be sure, this transpires through philosophy's own dispensation as a mode of thought. It is what one would expect if thought were moving ever closer to its final enunciation. Nevertheless, there is another way to see what is happening. Philosophy expends its capital, so to speak, until the symbol that is the source of metaphor is at last spent.

Philosophical thinking's final venture becomes explicit when Kant suggests that for too long thought has sought the basis of its legitimacy in the object (Gegen-stana) over against which it stands. The quest for elegance, coherence, and rational certainty must begin, Kant says, with the subjectivity of the subject for which there can be an object in its objectivity. Even so, this venture is begun by Descartes when he asserts that reason - philosophical thinking's

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self-characterization and impersonal identity - may justify itself only by having recourse to its own marks. The rich analogies of transcendent tele- ology found in the Tradition are disavowed. Thought can therefore be "like" nothing but itself. With this, after this, there is nowhere left for philosophy to go.

This departure has been called the "transcendental turn." Once it is made, a particular conception of what it means to be, which is the historical conditio

sine qua non of philosophical thought, moves toward total self-closure, With this move, "the small word 'is, '" as Kant points out, is seen to add "no new predicate, but serves [only] to posit the predicate in its relation to the sub- ject. ''17 And with this devolution of the comprehension of Being from plenitude to the thing's mode of being thought as an object of possible experience, comes the critique that lies hidden within transcendental thinking from the start. The critique of idealism is the last glimmer of the taste for completeness and precision from which idealism itself springs. 1 s

This critique is too well known to recount at length. In essence, it points out the full implications for the philosophical project of the finitude of the subjectivity that has become the center of philosophical concern. This finitude is recognized by both Descartes and Kant. Each perceives its pernicious implications for the restoration of reason that each is involved in. Hence, having been schooled in philosophical discernment, each denigrates its place. Nevertheless, it is clear that subjectivity's finitude is disclosed to subjectivity from the start of its reflexion. The critique arises when it is understood that finitude is not to be gotten around, for it is what makes possible the situated- ness toward or, in Heidegger's term, the "fore-having" of, what it means to be, without which there could be no human understanding. Finitude, says this critique, has ontological significance. It limits the meaning and the condition of the possibility of reflexion, and of reflexion's object. Thought, it says, is limited always to interpreting. Being circular, its movement finds no natural point at which to stop. There is no final stage from which at last to see. With the closure that the transcendental turn performs, the taste for metaphors of luminosity and fixed place and penetrating vision, the pursuit, as Derrida says, of a discursive "center, ''19 has made itself, finally, futile.

In the preceding sections a possibility has been explored. This possibility contends that the history of philosophical speech can be seen as the exhaus- tion of a set of metaphors. What leads to this exhaustion is the critical pretension of the thought that finds them proper. Thought has been granted a symbolism within which alone the attainment of univocality can be under- stood to be its determinative or "essential" goal. This is philosophy. And so far as it is true to itself, this mode of thought eliminates successively more and

17 Critique of Pure Reason, 626f. 18 See Walter Schulz, "Ober den philosophiegeschichtlichen Ort Martin Heideggers," Phil.

Rundschau (1953-54), 65-93, 211-232. 19 Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," in The

Structuralist Controversy, p. 247f.

Philosophy, Metaphor, and Taste 255

more of its ties to the world of speech from which it arises. This purgation can be understood philosophically to be only for the best. Yet in becoming ever more austere and demanding, the symbol requires that its metaphorical explication be ever more circumspect. Finally, when the metaphors are restricted to those of inwardness - as when, for example, Husserl effects the epochO and finds thought sequestered in a transcendental consciousness burdened with the task of constituting an intersubjective world - the focus vanishes into itself. Philosophical speech has come to the choice of being repetitive or falling silent. It is in terms of the interpretation of this silence that the objections raised above concerning a "metaphorology" must be an- swered.

The crucial objection against the destructive use of "metaphor" was that the notion is meaningless when torn from a metaphysical context. The concept of metaphor, it was held, can be meaningful only within a network of natural resemblances. Without such a network, "metaphor" is either an empty term, or (which may come down to the same thing) the name for a free- floating play of language in which the distinction between sense and non- sense, on which meaningful discursiveness rests, dissolves. 'Metaphor ' would then be the name for discourse itself, but as such it could make no meaningful claim about its priority to other forms of speech.

Nevertheless, it has been argued - and the irony of using this term in a destructive context is acknowledged - that the abiding presence in which philosophical speech has been understood to be rooted is an untenable conclusion to the sustained argument that constitutes philosophy. The ab- solute datum that underlies philosophy's self-valuation is given, in the end, to a "subject" whose way to understand is to explicate, and thus, the meaning of whose Being, so far as this subject could ever determine, is temporality. Not only does this amount to an argument modus tollens against the interpre- tation of Being by which philosophy is possible; from the philosophical standpoint, it throws into question, not the validity, but the meaning of charges of formal contradictoriness that are raised against this conclusion.

What is involved in detaching metaphor from its moorings in natural resemblance? In what has been said, this severance occurs when metaphor is understood as related to a symbol. Metaphors of a certain sort are possible and proper only within a certain nexus of sense. The ground of propriety is nothing more nor less than the tastefulness of these metaphors. Possibilities of resemblance would then be understood to be bestowed from within the exploration of a symbolism. The exhaustion, perhaps the completion, of a symbolism would be signalled by an inability to proceed further metaphori- cally. This would mark, not the end of thought, but rather, eo ipso, the emergence of a new symbol.

Nevertheless, all of this seems suspect. It would seem that the very elab- oration of this situation would show that one is still operating within a symbolism that is realized in metaphors of illumination and fixed place. That is, this claim about symbolism would itself seem to be the pursuit of a center. And this center would be one permeated by inconsistency. Whatever cogency

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it might have would be only apparent and rhetorical. Given all that has been said here, is not the detection of the relationship between symbol and met- aphor as mediated by taste a philosophical claim? Is not its disavowal of "center" therefore spurious?

"There is no sense," says Derrida, "in doing without the concepts of metaphysics in order to attack metaphysics. We have no l anguage- no syntax and no lexicon - which is alien to this history; we cannot utter a single destructive proposition that has not already slipped into the form, the logic, and the implicit postulations of precisely what it seeks to contest. ' '2~ Nev- ertheless, does this show necessarily that the way that thought conceives of itself within this framework is fixed? That "there is no sense" means, of course, that it is non-sense to attempt to speak of the "end 0f philosophy," of its having culminated in its own dissolution, the seeds of which were sown at its beginning. By "non-sense" philosophy would mean the foolishness of self- contradiction, the foolishness, indeed, of entering the labyrinth. It must seem foolish to speak of the absolutism of metaphor, and therefore in metaphor, while claiming, nonetheless, that metaphor 's moorings are fictive, non-sub- stantial, or "merely metaphorical." Here one has entered into a world governed only by the play of mirrors.

As it stands, this dilemma is insoluable. The annunciation of the end of philosophy cannot be seen philosophically as anything but "non-sense." Nevertheless, something is accomplished in this dilemma in which philo- sophy is led to self-destructive conclusions. The critique of philosophy, which is in some sense philosophical and hence "impossible," sets free the notions of "impossibility," of "non-sense," and of "silence." The focus of the de- struction of metaphysics is located in the dispensation of these terms as univocal. Its focus, that is, lies in the detection of philosophy as a mode of speech made possible by certain assumption about what makes sense and what does not. Thus, Derrida may say that "the passage beyond philosophy does not consist in turning the page of philosophy (which usually comes down to philosophizing badly), but in continuing to read philosophers in a certain way."21 There is no way to speak of philosophy except philosophically. And yet, to turn philosophy, so to speak, against itself; that is, to continue to read philosophers "in a certain way," so that the primacy of their texts may be seen to be exercised in the abdication of this primacy - this, it seems, is the mission assigned now to thought by what philosophy has become. It is in thinking in this way that one participates in the advent of a new symbol? 2

What, then, is involved in understanding philosophy as the exploration of a symbol by means of metaphors? Such an understanding involves seeing that

20 Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play," p. 250. 2~ Ibid., p. 259. 22 See Otto P6ggeler, "Heidegger's Topology of Being," tr. Joseph J. Kockelmans, in On

Heidegger and Language, ed. Joseph J. Kockelmans (Evanston, 1972), p. 114f., esp. n. 11 ; and his Der Dentcweg Martin Heideggers (Pfiillingen, 1963), p. 276; as well as his "'Historicity' in Heidegger's Late Work," tr. J. N. Mohanty, The Southwestern Ynl. Phil. (1973), 69f.

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philosophy proceeds, not according to a methodologically secured detection of natural resemblance, but by taste. The meaning of a universal history as the history of metaphors is a conundrum. Such a history would be the use of a metaphor (of metaphor) where the grounds of "metaphor" itself are chal- lenged. If this seems to betray an emptiness at the heart of such thinking, this emptiness ought not to be presumed to be a sign of insignificance. The metaphors of "emptiness," of "silence," of "chaos," even of "madness," which seem to attach themselves to this project so readily, must be seen as ciphers within a system of oppositions. Their meaning, so far as it is deter- mined by this system called "metaphysics," has become problematical, as well. A way must be found to come to terms with the nexus of sense that sees only emptiness and hears only silence in the play of metaphor and taste. If by " G o d " is meant what has been called the "discursive center," or perhaps the "Being of beings," then Nietzsche is right in saying: "I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar. ''23 Nevertheless, this observation must be tempered with the injunction raised by Robert Graves: " that to know the name of deity at any given place or period, is far less important than to know the nature of the sacrifies that he or she was then offered. ''z4

Brockport, New York

2a Friedrich Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols, "Reason in Philosophy," 5, in The Portable Nietzsehe, tr. and ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York, 1954), p. 483.

24 The White Goddess, amended and enlarged ed. (New York, 1966), p. 14.