REJECTION OF THE METAPHORICAL: LOOKING BEYOND

THE BINARIES

Index:

Introduction Metaphor as Literal Beyond the Literal and the Metaphorical Illustrations from Poetry Bibliography

Rajgopal Saikumar (B.A. LLB) Current Affiliation: Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Humanities

rajgopal.saikumar@gmail.comPh. No- 09901651905

Word Count: 8,647 approx

ABSTRACT: I contend that to posit the ‘metaphorical’ actually limits our thinking, and to really free ourselves from these shackles, we must let go of the distinction between the metaphor and literal. If we no longer posit the metaphorical, two stands are possible: Either there exists only the literal, (or) there is neither the literal nor the metaphorical. For the first possibility, I critically read Donald Davidson’s influential paper “What Metaphors Mean”. For the second possibility of going beyond literal and the metaphorical, I read Heidegger on metaphor and philosophy and attempt to illustrate this possibility through Classical Sangam Tamil poetry (Cangam).

Introduction:

Before the 1950’s and 60’s, logical positivists, British empiricists and philosophers in general

had demoted the ‘metaphor’ to a stylistic decoration, calling it a meaningless emotive

venting. On the other hand there were the romanticist critics, who celebrated metaphors

poetic power to create and express the non-discursive. It was after this point, as a reaction to

these two extreme points of view, that analytical philosophers like Max Black, Beardsley and

others attempted to rehabilitate metaphors by showing that- it is cognitively meaningful and

should be treated no different from the literal. There point (and also Davidson’s criticism of

them) is that metaphors appear even more cognitive and more meaningful than the literal,

they represent an excess of the literal. For them, metaphorical statements had a non-

paraphrasability, an inexpressible meaning which the literal could not express or even attempt

to convey.

The other position that emerged around this time is that all metaphorical statements when

taken literally; are semantically absurd or grammatically deviant. The fault of the sentence

will exclude its literal interpretation and giving way ipso facto, to its metaphorical meaning.

From this violation of the semantic conditions which causes a friction, then leads to a seeing,

interpreting, weighing etc. of the different words, and a ‘semantically’ meaningful statement

is ultimately derived. Hence, to recognize and interpret a metaphor one has to see ‘where’ the

semantic rules of the sentence break. Another argument put-forth was: The metaphorical

meanings of the words are all contained within its literal meanings and the speaker who

knows the literal or lexical meaning of the expression, ipso facto knows its metaphorical

meaning.

The question of metaphors is so strongly debated for significant reasons. Some of them are as

follows. Firstly, Metaphor is, or at least should be, situated within the more comprehensive

models of cognition, communication and culture itself. To see the prominence of metaphors

on everyday thought has implication for theories of mind and meaning. Metaphor here is not

seen as a linguistic trope specific to certain “expressions” only, rather there is something

natural in the use of metaphors, human minds do not make an “effort” to be metaphorical,

they naturally speak so.

Secondly, there are questions about how a person comes up with a metaphor, is it cultural,

from societal contexts, psychological or is it neural? There is an enormous use of

metaphorical thinking in fields such music, dance, theatre, performing arts, law etc. But this

enormous usage needs to conceptualised, formulated, when metaphorical languages are used

in performing arts, they are often used in highly complex ways and to capture a structure or a

pattern in it is a challenge.

Finally, the inter-disciplinary nature of metaphor, ranging from performing arts to

psychology, psychoanalysis, law, anthropology etc. opens up the doors to newer

understanding of this theme. It is no longer contained within the traditional disciplinary

frameworks of linguistics and philosophy of language (given that metaphor until recently was

the neglected child of western philosophy).

Given this, my thesis for the paper is to argue that- metaphors do not exist. I contend that to

posit the ‘metaphorical’ actually limits our thinking, and to really free ourselves from these

shackles, we must let go of the distinction between the metaphor and literal. If we no longer

posit the metaphorical, two stands are possible: Either there exists only the literal, or there is

neither the literal nor the metaphorical. From a close reading of Davidson’s paper on

metaphor we see how there is nothing special to metaphorical meaning and all that exists

could be literal. And from a close reading of Heidegger I would like to argue that the problem

of metaphor is fundamentally a problem of philosophy and a conflict of the nature of

philosophy itself. There are close links between questions of metaphor and metaphysics, and

that we must overcome this binary of literal and metaphorical altogether. I also show

illustrations of how this could be possible. This I attempt to explore in the second half of the

paper.

Section II: Metaphors as Literal1

Max Black’s work on metaphor is often been considered significant, and even called

“groundbreaking” in some of the literature on metaphors that I have come across. But I

believe this is true more so because of the context in which Black wrote on metaphors.

Philosophy, especially a lot of British empiricism has always downgraded metaphorical

thought. Hobbes for example in Leviathan puts metaphorical language in the category of

“Abuses of Language” and says that words used metaphorically are meant to deceive others.2

Elsewhere in Leviathan, Hobbes states that language leads to absurdity when one uses

metaphorical language. The use of metaphors, tropes and other rhetorical devices when used

instead of “proper words”, Hobbes proclaims that in the “reckoning and seeking of truth, such

speeches are not to be admitted”.3

At the turn of the 19th century however philosophers like Nietzsche and Bergson emphasized

the importance of metaphor in philosophy but there was a parallel rise of positivism that set

up quite an inhospitable climate for the subject.

Max Black comes in at this point, defending metaphors but as Davidson criticizes him, Black

almost runs close to the ‘neo-romantics’. Black talks of the necessity to be metaphorical in

philosophy and even science and goes on to argue the non-paraphrasability of it. As per

Black’s theory, the metaphor goes beyond its literal meaning and gains a new metaphorical

meaning in context. He insisted that the metaphorical meaning cannot be paraphrased by

merely listing a set of similarities between two subjects.

What does Davison want to refute? In this context enters Davidson with his article- “What

Metaphors Mean”, a ‘positivist’ inclined philosophy directly debating against these neo-

romantic notions of metaphor, another “groundbreaking” work on this area, central to any

study on this topic. Davidson in his article makes it clear what he wants to refute: Firstly, the

argument that metaphors have a special meaning in addition to its literal meaning. Secondly,

one cannot paraphrase it precisely because they have meanings over and above, beyond the

literal meaning. Thirdly, metaphors have a cognitive content and may be true even when

literal interpretation would render them false.4

1 In this paper I use the term ‘Metaphor’ interchangeably with ‘metaphorical statements’. 2 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Everyman Publication, 1973) p. 143 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Everyman Publication, 1973)p.234 See; Thomas Leddy “Davidson’s Rejection of Metaphorical Meaning” Philosophy and Rhetoric Vol. 16 (No 2 1983) pp. 63-78

Davidson however must not be mistaken for the traditionalist views on metaphors. He

explicitly agrees that “Metaphor is a legitimate device not only in literature but in science,

philosophy and the law...My disagreement is with the explanation of how metaphor works its

wonders.”5 He acknowledges the significance of metaphors. To put the theme of his

philosophy on metaphors very broadly, he is dealing with two set of questions; (1) Is there

metaphorical meaning? (2) And how do we understand a metaphor, how do we grasp it?

To the second question, his response broadly is that we understand metaphors the same way

as we understand ordinary language; we look for similarities and likeness between the

relations, and interpret it. To the first question, Davidson rejects the idea of metaphorical

meaning, he states that there is no such thing as pure metaphorical meaning as opposed to the

literal. So the meaning that “Tolstoy is a moralist infant” has the literal meaning of Tolstoy

being a moralist infant and nothing over and beyond that. Quoting Davidson “This paper is

concerned with what metaphors mean, and its thesis is that metaphors mean what the words,

in their most literal interpiretation mean, and nothing more”6

Although he quotes this to be his thesis, the bulk of the paper is in negating “metaphorical

meaning” proposed by, as he claims- ‘much of contemporary philosophy”, referring to

philosophers from Aristotle to Max Black and others.

Davidson believes that there are no special semantic resources or linguistic mechanisms on

which metaphors depend on. Rather, they use the same semantic resources on which the

‘ordinary’ depends and so there are actually no instructions for devising metaphors. As I

mentioned above, his thesis is made explicit in the statement that metaphors mean the words

in their most literal interpretation mean and nothing more. As per him, the mistake until now

has been in saying that a metaphor has, in addition to its literal sense or meaning, ‘another’

sense or meaning. He agrees that a metaphor cannot be paraphrased but the reason is different

for him. It is not because metaphors say something too novel for literal expression but

because there is nothing there to paraphrase.

A metaphor makes us attend to some likeness, “often a novel or surprising likeness between

two or more things”. Two roses are similar because they share the property of rose; two

infants are similar because they both possess the virtue of infant’ness, of being infants. But

when (to use Davidson’s example) that Tolstoy was “a great moralizing infant”, he obviously 5 Donald Davidson “What Metaphors Mean” Critical Inquiry Vol.5, No.1 (Spl. Issue on Metaphor) (Autumn,1978) p- 336 ID at p. 32

does not mean the infant Tolstoy but the adult Tolstoy being metaphorically called an infant.

So in what sense is the writing of Tolstoy similar to an infant? We then make a class of

objects which includes all infants as well as the adult Tolstoy. On giving this some thought,

we would be able to come close to figuring out some common properties. So in the sentence

“Tolstoy was a great moralizing infant”, we must find special categories common to the two

relations, and so posit a set of words that could express the meaning of the term “infant” such

as ‘being cranky, throwing tantrums...’ This then is his concept of the ‘metaphorical

meaning’, the way we grasp it. This thesis needs to be contrasted with Black’s view that

metaphor not only changes the meaning of the focus term but also the meanings of the

surrounding terms.7

The argument so far has led to the conclusion that as much of metaphor as can be explained

in terms of meaning may, and indeed must, be explained by appeal to the literal meanings of

words. A consequence is that the sentences in which metaphors occur are true or false in a

normal, literal way, for if the words in them don’t have special meanings, sentences don’t

have special truth.

No theory of metaphorical meaning can help understand how metaphor works. Metaphors

work like the plainest sentences do; what distinguishes a metaphor is not ‘meaning’ but

‘use’:- like assertion, hinting, promising, criticizing etc. We do not use metaphors to say

something special, no matter how indirectly. For a metaphor says only what shows on its

face- usually a patent falsehood or an absurd truth. And this plain truth or falsehood needs no

paraphrase- it is given in the literal meaning of words.

If a metaphor has a special cognitive content, why should it be so difficult or impossible to

set it out? Why can’t we paraphrase the metaphorical meaning, why does Black think that the

literal paraphrase inevitably says too much and with the wrong emphasis? Can’t we if we are

clever enough, come as close as we please? But Davidson’s position on cognitive content of a

metaphor is ambiguous. Although he insists that a metaphor does not have a cognitive

content of its own, independent of the literal meaning, but he still sees some point in it,

“...but this not, of course, to deny that a metaphor has a point, nor that that point can be

brought out by using further words”.8

7 Thomas Leddy “Davidson’s Rejection of Metaphorical Meaning” Philosophy and Rhetoric Vol. 16 (No 2 1983) p. 718 Donald Davidson “What Metaphors Mean” Critical Inquiry Vol.5, No.1 (Spl. Issue on Metaphor) (Autumn,1978) p.32

Davidson employs an absolutely pragmatic approach to the subject of metaphors. This is

made clear in his comparison between metaphor and lie. Both are speech acts which say one

thing but accomplish something else. So the sentence “She is a witch” can be understood as

both, a lie and a metaphor without changing the meaning of ‘witch’. “The parallel between

making a metaphor and telling a lie is emphasised by the fact that the same sentence can be

used, with meaning unchanged, for either purpose.”9 Here the ‘use’ of metaphors and to tell

a lie are differentiated purely on the basis of how they are ‘used’, rather than in a difference

in words per se. In the first few parts of his article its Davidson makes it clear that there needs

to be distinction between what words mean and what they are used to do and metaphor for

him belongs entirely to the domain of use.10 The words depend entirely on the ordinary

meanings of the words but the difference is in its use, in “the imaginative employment of

words and sentences...” The metaphor says only what, as he metaphorically puts it, ‘shows on

its face’- usually a patent falsehood or an absurd truth. “What distinguishes metaphor is not

meaning but use- in this it is like assertion, hinting, lying, promising, or criticizing.”11

There is nothing special that we use the metaphor for. We must give up the idea that a

metaphor carries a message, that it has content or meaning (except of course its literal

meaning). No doubt the metaphor makes us see surprising analogies but the question is “how

the metaphor is related to what it makes us see”. Richard Rorty, a radical exponent of

Davidson’s theory, takes this use-theory much further. For Rorty, metaphor belongs

exclusively to the domain of use. It is a “jungle” of irregular and unpredictable noises, in

sharp contrast to the regular “literal use of language” for which semantic notions of meaning

have a role.12 Elsewhere, Rorty states “Tossing a metaphor into a conversation is like

suddenly breaking off the conversation long enough to make a face...or slapping your

interlocutors face or kissing him. Tossing a metaphor into a conversation is like using italics,

or illustrations...”13

On Ellipsis Simile Theorists: The sentence uttered in Anthony and Cleopatra “The barge she

sat in, like a burnish’d throne” there can be two lines of arguments broadly. (1.) One could

argue that in the context of the text, one can definitely conjecture what the sentence means, it

9 ID at p. 4210 ID at p.3311 ID at p. 4312 Josef Stern “Metaphor, Semantics and Context” in Cambridge Handbook on Metaphor and Thought ed. Raymond W. Gibbs (Cambridge University Press, 2008) p. 26613 Rorty (1989, p.18) as cited in Mark Johnson “Philosophy’s Debt to Metaphor” in Cambridge Handbook on Metaphor and Thought, ed. Raymond W. Gibbs (Cambridge University Press, 2008) p. 46

is paraphrasable and in fact has been paraphrased time and again by literary critics (say

Reductionist theory). (2) The other line of argument is that it is not in fact possible to

paraphrase the sentence, on paraphrasing it, the sentence loses its cognitive value and

changes the intended effect and meaning of it (Non-Reductionist).

Davidson may vaguely be put in the former, but he also finds certain defects with this stand

which I shall briefly deal with in this part and Max Black could be put in the latter category

on non-reductionists. There is however a third category of Heidegger who argues in the

context of poetry the impossibility to paraphrase, but his argument is radically different. I

discuss this in the second half of this paper.

The Reductionist’ claim normally is that the metaphors are elliptical similes. For an

elliptical simile theorist, Philip Turetzky argues14, what a complete paraphrase would look

like is a list of statements of comparison between, say, “friendship” and “the shady tree” in

the metaphor “Friendship is a shady tree” and a long enough list of similes will give the

cognitive content of the metaphor without remainder.

But this I believe is a far too simplistic model. As per a naive simile theory metaphors

simply abbreviate explicit literal comparisons. This is to say that the literal meaning of the

metaphor is same as the literal meaning of a matching simile. “Love is a red rose” merely

replaced with the ellipsis (abbreviations or deleted words), “love is like a red rose” hardly

says anything, it does not inform me about any relation between the experience of love and

the rose itself.

Davidson very clearly states that he wishes to distinguish himself from the Elliptical Simile

theory. “For if we make the literal meaning of the metaphor to be the literal meaning of a

matching simile, we deny access to what we originally took to be the literal meaning of the

metaphor, and we agreed almost from the start this meaning was essential to the working of

the metaphor, whatever else might have to be brought in the way of a non literal meaning.”15

They make the hidden meaning of the metaphor all too obvious and accessible, and in each

case the hidden meaning is to be found simply by looking to the literal meaning of what is

usually a painfully trivial simile. Instead, to see metaphors more complexly is to see what

Davidson argued in the beginning of his essay. “A metaphor makes us attend to some

14 Philip Turetzky “Metaphors and Paraphrase” Philosophy & Rhetoric Vol.21, No.3 (1988) p. 20515 Donald Davidson “What Metaphors Mean” Critical Inquiry Vol.5, No.1 (Spl. Issue on Metaphor) (Autumn,1978) p. 40

likeness, often a novel or surprising likeness, between two or more things”16 Hence, two roses

are similar because they share the property of being a rose. Two things are similar if they

share the properties, like when saying “Tolstoy is an infant moralist” is to compare the adult

Tolstoy with certain virtues or properties of infants and then chalk out a sense out of it. The

Elliptical Simile theorists would argue that metaphors then are a list of similes. By this

meaning, metaphors are “grounded” in the relations between two distinct subjects or

categories, like love and roses, Tolstoy and infants etc. However whether it is “grounded” or

no in fact is where a lot of debates rest upon.

The non-reductionist may challenge them with vaguer metaphors: “And the sound of a

rope”17, “a grief ago”, or as A.K. Ramanujam uses “a night lit April sun”, Pablo Neruda using

“black and anguished sun...” Davidson would argue that a long list of simile’ can still be

given even if the task is not a practical one. Davidson is basically trying to say that these non-

reductionists merely play with something obscure, they want to magically impute some

meaning into a metaphorical statement, but for Davidson, by looking hard enough, it is

always possible to find it. His argument is that metaphor and simile is useful comparison

because “a simile tells us, in part, what a metaphor merely nudges us into noting.” 18 “Old

fools are babes again” is the metaphorical but on putting this as a simile “Old fools are like

babes again” there is an express relation between fools and babes. This Davidson calls the

figurative meaning of a metaphor: “the figurative meaning of a metaphor is the literal

meaning of the corresponding simile”19.

So the move Davidson seems to be making from Elliptical Simile theory is that metaphor is

in fact an abbreviated figurative simile, deriving from the corresponding simile taken

figuratively. So in “Juliet is the sun” and “Juliet is like the sun”, is the Juliet is ‘figuratively’

like the sun, literally would mean that if A is like B, then B is like A. But no one says ‘Sun is

like Juliet’. Thus Davidson gives the example “Christ was a chronometer” in its figurative

sense is synonymous with “Christ was like a chronometer”. One of my reservations to this

figurative meaning argument is that Davidson does not talk about what figurative speech is.

Figurative, that is, figures of speech in itself poses a problem to the philosophy of language.

The problems posed by metaphor itself is one of ‘figure of speech’, then one needs to look at

16 ID at p. 3317 Pablo Neruda “Drunk as a Drunk” Pablo Neruda Poems (PoemHunter.com, 2005)18 Donald Davidson “What Metaphors Mean” Critical Inquiry Vol.5, No.1 (Spl. Issue on Metaphor) (Autumn,1978) p.3919 Id at 39

other tropes such as metonymy, synecdoche etc. So to say that X is figuratively like Y does

not really take away the problem because the problem ‘lies’ in this figurative.

However, what Davidson does acknowledge is that the difficulty is in identifying the simile

that corresponds to a given metaphor. For this Davidson quotes Virginia Woolf who says

highbrow is “a man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop

across country in pursuit of an idea”. What simile corresponds here? Davidson says that it

could be perhaps “A highbrow man or woman whose intelligence is like a thoroughbred

horse and who persists in thinking about an idea like a ride galloping across country in

pursuit of...well something”.

An interesting criticism is given by Thomas Leddy which has implications on the next part of

this article, which is broadly on Heidegger and metaphors.

As per Thomas Leddy: Davidson’s claim that the metaphor does not really mean anything, is

the claim that it has no cognitive content. The reason it has no cognitive content is because it

does not say anything more than what it literally says. Thus Davidson accepts that he has

narrowed the meaning of the term “meaning” but he also accepts that he has narrowed down

the meaning of the term “cognitive content”. As per Thomas Leddy, this poses a circular

argument. A metaphor does not have cognitive content because (1) when interpreted literally,

it does not give us true propositional knowledge and (2) it cannot be effectively paraphrased

into a set of literal propositions without considerable interpretative interference on the part of

the reader. As per Leddy, both these points our based on Davidson’ assumption that- only

literal propositions contain cognitive content. Such an assumption ignores the possibility that

metaphors may themselves be propositions with cognitive content appropriate to their special

metaphorical meaning. Moreover, Davidson ignores the fact that there other kinds of

knowledge than propositional knowledge.

I believe Artistic works for example gives us non-propositional knowledge. Metaphorical

language common in psychoanalysis, between analyst and analysand relations, often have

metaphorical language with specific meaning (which needs to be deciphered) but are not

propositional statements. Leddy however gives the example of ‘intuition’ as a pre-

propositional knowledge. Many psychologists have asserted that cognition often begins with

an experience of metaphorical insight.20 In fact, Thomas Leddy’s point on Davidson is that he

20 Thomas Leddy “Davidson’s Rejection of Metaphorical Meaning” Philosophy and Rhetoric Vol. 16 (No 2 1983) p.74

denies metaphors cognitive content not because they fail to teach us things or have a point but

because the sentences in which they appear are literally false and have no meaning beyond

their literal meaning. So for Leddy, Davidson is denying that there are other forms of

cognition than literal propositional cognition, or he is saying that “cognition” refer to literal

propositional knowledge only.

Apart from the criticisms that I pointed out in the above paragraphs, a few more points to be

noted are as follows.

Quoting the words of Davidson, he states that whether or not metaphor depends on “new or

extended meaning, it certainly depends in some way on the ‘original meanings; an adequate

account of metaphor must allow that the primary or original meanings of words remain active

in their metaphorical setting”.21

But what is a literal meaning for him? Some have argued that it is the ‘lexical meaning’ that

he could be talking about. But phenomenologically speaking, literal meaning is seldom that

comes to one’s mind on reading a metaphor if by literal he means the lexical meanings. Do

we firstly think in terms of lexical meaning of words? Some may respond that when we use

words, we unconsciously know the lexical meaning of those words. But one may also argue

that when we learn our natural language, it is hardly learnt in the sense of primary meanings,

literal meanings etc. We draw maps, make connections, make observations and based on a

complex learning process, use words and meanings. And then when we see a metaphor like

“Juliet is the sun”, we hardly think of the literal sun as the hot ball of hydrogen in the solar

system.

Secondly, certain assumptions about truth and meaning is foundational for such analytical

theorists as Davidson. In particular, Davidson assumes (1) that meaning is conceptual and

propositional in nature, (2) that meaning is truth-conditional, and (3) that only literal concepts

can be the bearers of meaning.22

Davidson’s theory is limiting precisely because metaphors have no semantic content in

themselves, they depend on the literal for the semantic content, and so they are not

propositional in themselves. What is not propositional, cannot be judged for Truth.

21 Donald Davidson “What Metaphors Mean” Critical Inquiry Vol.5, No.1 (Spl. Issue on Metaphor) (Autumn,1978) p. 3422 See, Mark Johnson “Philosophy’s Debt to Metaphor” in Cambridge Handbook on Metaphor and Thought ed. Raymonds W. Gibbs (Cambridge University Press, 2008) p. 47

Although Davidson acknowledges it in the beginning of the paper, he hardly pays any serious

attention to the fact that literal meanings can be bizarre but the cognitive value of the

metaphors can sometimes be far more powerful. Metaphorical thinking has a significant

operation in “Abstract thinking” that philosophy, science and several other disciplines have to

engage in.

But in reading Davidson, we must avoid mis-reading him, associating him with the

traditionalist approaches of philosophy and positivists. He does not really downgrade it, nor

does he take away the complexity of metaphors. In fact, Davidson agrees that even the literal

meaning can be difficult to figure out, it is never on the face of it, never is it ‘ipso facto’.

This in fact is the problem I have with some of the criticisms of William G. Lycan in his

Introduction to Philosophy of Language.23 Lycan’s criticism is that as per Davidson’s theory

one can never misinterpret a metaphor. So if in response to Romeo’s utterance of “Juliet is

the sun”, one can never misinterpret it, so that some eavesdropper screams “I get it- Juliet

depresses him because she’s so stupid and smells horrible”. Lycan says that as per

Davidson’s Causal Theory, this can never happen only because “the eavesdropper’s mental

architecture was causally different from Romeo and ours”. This I believe is an unfair

criticism levelled against Davidson. To re-assert what Davidson want to argue, what he

denies is that a “metaphor asserts or implies a certain complex things by dint of a special

meaning and thus accomplishes a job of yielding an insight”(Black).24 Davidson agrees in

fact that there is no limit to what a metaphor calls to our attention, and much of what we are

caused to notice is not propositional in character. He continues to agree with Black, Henle

and others about the value and power in metaphors but his only point is in the question of

‘how metaphors work’.

Section III: Beyond the Literal and the Metaphorical

THE FOUR LINES OF ARGUMENTS ON METAPHORS:

1. The literal meaning of the metaphor is non-sense, hence the metaphor has no

cognitive but only emotive value.

2. There is nothing called metaphorical meaning, everything is based on the literal and

ordinary meaning only.

23 William G. Lycan, Introduction to Philosophy of Language, (Routledge, 2nd ed. 2008) p.17824 Donald Davidson “What Metaphors Mean” Critical Inquiry Vol.5, No.1 (Spl. Issue on Metaphor) (Autumn,1978) p.46

3. The metaphor has cognitive value as well as emotive value. When the literal meaning

of the word does not fit in the sentence, it causes a certain friction forcing us to

cognitively apply different analogies or meanings to the word.

4. All language is a metaphor, it is the basic form of language. Even what is called the

literal meaning is disguised as literal but is actually metaphorical.

A certain style of writing stands out in “Nature of Language” by Heidegger25. His use of

words is ambiguous and he deliberately introduces words with shifting meanings. The

metaphorical element in his writings are central to it, almost so it seems as though his writing

loses a certain ‘logical analysis’ or philosophical vigour to it. This accusation has in fact been

made more so recently for writers such as Derrida, Irigaray etc., saying that they indulge in

and exploit the shifts of meaning and end up in word play, metaphor play. Why would Luce

Irigaray want to claim to replace the ‘dry-phallic’ language of philosophy to the ‘wetness of

the lips’?

The question therefore must be why they use such language? The question is not whether a

valid philosophy can be deduced out of such metaphorical utterance, it is not whether

philosophy can be found ‘in’ metaphorical discourse because this question pre-supposes the

validity of metaphor, of what it is and what metaphorical discourse is, in opposition to

philosophical thinking. Heidegger in fact is questioning the very designation of “metaphor”

itself. How is the metaphor born in language and what does it say about the project of rational

knowledge and philosophy? Heidegger by calling to question ‘metaphors’, is also calling to

question the character of philosophic reason itself.

To establish this argument, I will engage in a joint reading of Heidegger’s “The Nature of

Language”26 and Ronald Bruzina’s ‘Heidegger on the Metaphor and Philosophy’27.

Ronald Bruzina discusses Heidegger’s The Principle of Reason, where he reflects on the

statement “Nothing is without reason” (by Leibniz). Elaborating on layers of meaning in the

words of the sentence, he finds that different meanings can be deduced by different

accentuation of the statement. So now we have the statement: “Nothing is without reason”.

“Heidegger points out, now, that we could say that the shift in heard emphasis gives us a new

25 See, Martin Heidegger “The Nature of Language” in On The Way To Language (Harperone, 1982)26 Martin Heidegger “The Nature of Language” in On The Way To Language (Harperone, 1982)27 Ronald Bruzina “Heidegger on Metaphor and Philosophy” in Heidegger and Modern Philosophy ed. Michael Murray (Yale University Press, 1978) p.184

way of seeing”28. We get a new way of ‘understanding’ the same sentence by shifting the way

it is ‘seen’ or ‘heard’ (by stressing on the words “is” and “reason” for example). What then is

the relation between understanding and seeing or hearing differently because neither the

auditory nor the visual is understanding in itself, so that “thought can be termed hearing or

seeing only in a transferred sense, i.e, in a metaphorical sense.”29

Now seeing/hearing can be used for (used in place of/standing for) understanding or thought

only if it presupposes another schemata; between the sensible and the super-sensible. The

sensible includes the eyes for seeing, ears for hearing, tongue for tasting etc. and the super-

sensible is something like the mental and so the intellect, reason, thought etc. Reasoning and

Thought if in the realm of Super-sensible and the seeing and hearing is in the realm of

Sensible. Only within such a schemata (sensible and super-sensible), can seeing be used for

understanding or thought. “It is at once obvious that the schema is a metaphysical one, and

consequently the validity of the designation ‘metaphorical’ for this instance of way of

speaking has a metaphysical schema as its basis.”30 Once this schemata falls, the

metaphorical status will also fall and so quoting Heidegger “Only within metaphysics is there

the metaphorical.”31

Also fundamental to a lot of language theories including Saussure, Chomsky etc is the

distinction between language as spoken, the speaking activity, with our mouth and lips and

tongue, as experienced and conceived; in opposition to- the langue, the lingua, the language

as the system. Schemata and binaries such as ‘the phonic reality’ on one side and the ‘mental

intention’ on the other, the ‘sensible physical’ on one side and the ‘mental super-sensible’ on

the other exist at this metaphysical level.

“The establishment of this divorce of the sensible and non-sensible, of the physical and the

non-physical, is a fundamental trait of what, named metaphysical, gives authoritative

determination to Western thought. Once it is recognized that this distinction between the

sensible and non-sensible is insufficient, metaphysics loses the rank of the authoritative

determinant for the course of thinking.”32

28 ID at p.18629 Id at p. 18630 Id at p. 18631 Der Satz Vom Grund pp. 88-89 as cited in ID at p.18732 Der Satz Vom Grund pp. 88-89 as cited in id at p.187

So the following can be deduced from this above set of arguments. Firstly, some set of

schemata/distinctions are always presupposed when a certain expression is designated as a

metaphor and further, this distinction is a metaphysical one. But Heidegger clearly means

more when he says “Only within metaphysics is there the metaphorical”. This leads us to

what Ronald Bruzina characterizes as the “assertive discourse and rational account” i.e.

ratio.33 “What is needed, then, is clarification of the assertive statement as defining a primary

type of discourse on the basis of which other types are determined.”34

In “The Nature of Language” Heidegger juxtaposes poetry and thought. He is reading Stefan

George’s poem “The Word” very carefully and points out that poetry cannot be explained by

paraphrasing it as a propositional statement. Poetry has to be read by remaining within the

poetry, language as assertive discourse is not what language is for him. The argument he is

making in “The Nature of Language” when read with the Ronald Bruzina’s essay, seems to

be that the traditional understanding of philosophy is that philosophy is rational discourse, a

propositional statement (like the sentence: If (A is B) and (C is A) then (C is B)). Ronald

Bruzina states “Correlative to ratio, reason, rational account etc., is the proposition, for in the

propositional statement is articulated the structure and identity of elements whose detailing

and relating constitute knowledge”

The “Four Lines of Arguments” on metaphors that I have stated in the beginning of this part

shows how all the four arguments are somehow related to the literal/metaphorical binary. The

first line argues that a metaphor has no cognitive value but only emotive, the second line

argues that there is nothing called metaphorical meaning, there is only literal meaning

(Davidson as discussed in this paper falls in this category). The third line of argument which

says that metaphors have a cognitive value through a tension created between sense and non-

sense of the literal meaning of the word. Even in the fourth line of argument; in that language

itself is metaphorical, depends on a kind of meaningfulness of the literal and hence arising the

argument that all is metaphorical. The idea of metaphor arises only in opposition to the

literal.

So to summarise it until now, (1) the first argument was on the relation between the metaphor

and the literal as being based presupposed on a fundamental metaphysical schemata. (2) The

second argument is the central role of ratio and propositional thought in western

33 Ronald Bruzina “Heidegger on Metaphor and Philosophy” in Heidegger and Modern Philosophy ed. Michael Murray (Yale University Press, 1978) p.18934 Id at p.190

philosophical discourse as stated in the paragraph preceding the last paragraph. I have

juxtaposed these two arguments side by side in the above paragraphs, which then need to be

synthesised.

Heidegger is arguing that much of Western Philosophy seems to be caught up in this quest for

rational knowledge and proposition/rational knowledge is bound up with these philosophical

traditions. The birth of an “ideal” knowledge, a specific superior discourse of philosophy lead

to a word getting an “ideal” type of meaning and other meanings as secondary, accessory like

and metaphorical. This “ideal” knowledge becomes the ‘project’ of philosophy; it is always

aspiring to achieve that ideal, an implied motive.

What exactly is philosophical discourse for Heidegger then? Bruzina argues that Heidegger

(through Husserl) is articulating what the dominative western philosophical tradition to be. In

these traditions “knowledge taken as rational grasp is account i.e. ratio, that is, adequately

and explicitly articulated differentiation by complete essential (i.e. universal and constant)

notes.”35 Hence, it is not just any articulation of a rational grasp, but one that “respects and

reveals essential differences”, it aims at specification and differentiation rather than mixtures

and fusion. This necessarily leads to the conclusion that such rational thought requires a clear

“differentiation” of meaning, one that is a ‘proper expression’, a literal expression and the

other is the secondary, transferred and metaphorical expression.

“Rational philosophic thought is a project that constitutes itself by defining a schema of basic

distinctions in terms of which are determined both its validity as truth tending and the orders

of phenomena of which it would ideally render a full finished account, including itself” To

expand on this paragraph, rational philosophic thought is a “project”- as we have seen

above, it works with this implied motive to aspire to the ‘idea’ of what philosophical

discourse “ought to be”. Hence, the philosophical activity is a quest, a project, a continuous

aspiration. Rational philosophic thought is a project that constitutes itself by defining a

schema of basic distinctions- this implies that in this ‘project’, philosophy is self-accounting,

it has to define its own place, explain itself, given an account by placing itself in its own

discourse, it has to ‘constitute’ it’s own role. It is thus, constituting itself but how it does this

is only by defining the schema as we have seen above, a schema of differentiation and

specification so central to western philosophy. “Rational philosophic...in terms of which are

determined both its validity as truth tending and the others phenomena of which it would 35 Ronald Bruzina “Heidegger on Metaphor and Philosophy” in Heidegger and Modern Philosophy ed. Michael Murray (Yale University Press, 1978) p.194

ideally render a full finish account including itself” seems to imply that through this process

of basic distinctions it determines its motive to give a complete, full and true picture of the

phenomenal it is studying and by doing this, constituting itself viz. the other.

Two questions arise at this point, what is language prior to this birth of rational thought in

philosophy? Would some kind of an ‘original language’ direct us towards understanding the

irrational, the sub-conscious of humans? What is language with neither the literal nor the

metaphorical? Secondly, Heidegger seems to be arguing it through an account of the history

of western philosophy, but what about metaphors in other traditions where the evolution of

philosophy and rational thought happened in hugely different ways.

What Heidegger does to transcend this binary is- to look at ‘poetry’ and ‘thought’ as

neighbours. “All reflective thinking is poetic and all poetic is thinking”. His project in

“Nature of Language” starts with an experience of language, to conceive language as it is,

without making a proposition out of it, to conceive language as it “strikes us, comes over us,

overwhelms and transforms us”.36 Moreover, by experiencing language, we need to

experience it without these dichotomies, by neutralizing the distinction between poetry and

thought, literal and metaphorical. Poetry and Thought are both just worded articulations, they

are about just “Saying”37. But Heidegger is condemned to always begin from within western

rationality, from within the assertive discourses and differences that he wants to negate.

“Where the word breaks off no thing may be”

As we saw above, a dominant pursuit of the western philosophical tradition has been to

understand knowledge as a ratiocinative, a rational grasp articulated through express

differentiation, revealing differences, it aims at specification and differentiation. This project

leads to a certain kind of thinking and a kind of certain metaphysics. First I see the “tree” as

the genre (both as a signified and a signifier). Then when I see two trees, I distinguish them

and categorise, one as say, Neem tree and the other as Peepal tree, and it is in this process of

categorising and differentiation that I ‘name’ them and through the naming, the trees come

into existence. The categorisation (implying that: the identification of the ‘thing’ as existing)

and the ‘naming’ (as the Neem tree), the metaphysical and the naming happen

simultaneously, one is the other and they cannot be separated. And the ‘naming’ therefore

36 Martin Heidegger “The Nature of Language” in On The Way To Language (Harperone, 1982) p.5737 Ronald Bruzina “Heidegger on Metaphor and Philosophy” in Heidegger and Modern Philosophy ed. Michael Murray (Yale University Press, 1978) p.198

brings to life, brings to existence a ‘thing’.38 The metaphysics i.e, the enquiry about the reality

of a ‘thing’ includes a certain act of language, of naming it and metaphysics which is bogged

down by questions of ultimate existence, truth and causality, ties down language as well,

leading to distinctions such as literal language and metaphorical language.

If the word was lacking, if there was no word naming it, then the thing is non-existent; and so

“no thing may be”. Here ‘thing’ is used in its conventional sense as anything that ‘is’. No

thing “is” where the word is lacking. Heidegger in ‘Nature of Language’39 goes on to give the

example of the Sputnik to argue that the word alone gives being to the thing. Talking about

its invention: if the hurry, the challenge to create this thing with such maximum velocity and

time-space technology apparatus- if that hurry had not bespoken man and ordered him at its

call, if the ‘word’ that frames this order, this command, this challenge, if that word had not

spoken, then there would be no ‘Sputnik’. No thing is where the word is lacking.

Philosophy’s endeavour to find “truth” of the world through a thinking that is based on

difference and categorisation, is an endeavour which by necessity requires to posit a ‘literal’

and thus the metaphorical. And philosophy’s hegemony over such ‘thinking’, that is based on

difference and categorisation, pushes the poetic to the fringes of ‘thinking’ thus philosophy

constituting its own ratiocinative method as dominant. How else could Science claim that

there is a language of science, mathematics etc which is much purer and has the ability to

literally represent reality? For such discourse of science to gain dominance, the binary of

literal and metaphorical is politically speaking, necessary.

Illustrations from Poetry: Beyond Metaphors

The question of going beyond the dichotomies and binaries keeps arising in the criticisms of

western philosophy. Michel Foucault in talking about madness says that the Reason-

Unreason relation constitutes for Western culture one of the dimensions of its originality. He

finds a desperate need to go back and find the caesura between reason and unreason, for he

believed there was a time before this tear, before this split took place.

38 In literature a good illustration of it is Salman Rushdie’s “Enchantress of Florence” (Vermillion,2009) where one of its character Mogor Amore reaches Akbar’s court and narrates to him the story of Princess Qara Koz who travels from the sub-continent to Florence, Europe. Through the narration of the story, Qara Koz the enchantress actually comes to life in the Mughal world, in their paintings, history, culture etc. It shows how the ‘naming’ of such a character and telling her story actually has interesting implications on questions of fact and fiction, history and narrative(story telling), metaphysics and imagination etc. 39 Martin Heidegger “The Nature of Language” in On The Way To Language (Harperone, 1982) p. 62

In his Preface to ‘History of Madness’, he says that we need to recapture, in history, this

degree zero of the history of madness, when it was undifferentiated experience, the still

undivided experience of the division itself.40 Elsewhere in the preface he says, “The gesture

that divides madness is the constitutive one...The caesura that establishes the distance

between reason and non-reason is the origin”41

But this creation of binaries are not to be found in several non-western cultures. Another such

example is in the- fact and fiction split. The discipline of history is an illustration of this

binary, where the discipline of history claims factuality of the past that it unearths, claims an

empirical past as a “reality”, as if Akbar actually met Birbal the way I am meeting my friends

right now in the coffee shop. But Sanjay Subrahmanyam & ors in their text “Textures of

Time”42 think of history not merely as factual but also attempt to find history in the fictional,

in the narratives of bards, in the performances of dances and theatres of south-India. They

want to argue that these sources also are historiographical, these two enrich our vision of the

past and tell us about history. These histories may not be factual and empirical in the western

sense, but no history can actually be so. ‘Textures of Time’ tries to argue that these bards and

performers who narrated these stories of their communal pasts were also “historians” in some

sense, they cannot be pushed away as mere literary performers just because their mode of

articulation was different from the academic history writing of the West.

There are ways in which we can also actually think of language and its relation to meaning in

much deeper ways. A word as representing something in the world to the subject is far too

naive. I am not suggesting that Davidson is saying this but what I have tried to show is that he

and much of the other theories are still bogged down by these dichotomies. An illustration of

what such a transcending language would sound like is the Sangam (Cankam) poetry in the

Dravidian language of Tamil.43 To begin talking about the Sangam poetry without our

dichotomies of literal and metaphorical is straight away a hard task. For example, even the

name of the poets are striking ‘phrases’, such as Cemulappeyanirar meaning “The Poet of the

Red Earth and Pouring Rain” or Villakaviralinar “The Poet of the Fingers Around the Bow”.

People were known by their poems, the names of the poets were derived from the poems they

40 Michel Foucault, History of Madness (Routledge, 2006) Preface p. xxvii 41 ID at Preface p. xxviii42 Sanjaym Subrahmanyam, D. Schulman, Velacheru Rao, Textures of Time, Writing History in South-India 1600-1800 (Permanent Black, 2001)43 See, A.K. Ramanujam transl. Poems of Love and War: Anthologies and Long Poems of Classical Tamil (Oxford India, 1985)

wrote, a complex relation already emerges. So “The Poet of Red Earth and Pouring Rain”

writes:

What could my mother be

to yours? What kin is my father

to yours anyway? And how did you and I meet ever?

But in love

Our hearts have mingled

Like red earth and pouring rain

All typical day to day ‘objects’ in there world was totally meaningful even in language. Each

detail has a meaning and combinations of such things and their meaning evoke different

stories and produce complex statements with great subtlety and even deeper implication on

how we moderns should read them.

The outer world was not an object of science, an object whose truth must be revealed. Rather,

the outer world was a link, a link between the human world and what is external to it. The

world itself was a tool, a tool to communicate their passions and feelings. So for example, the

different kinds of landscapes cover the different cases of love.

In the space between us,

murderous tigers

roar like dark ocean waves circling in I how many woods

between us

and our arms’ embrace (Allur Nanmullai, Karunatokai, 237)

There is a detailed taxonomy of the landscape, flora and fauna and its links with emotions.

The eco-systems on the other hands has links with human emotions, and man’s activities and

feeling are a part of it. To describe the exterior landscape is also to inscribe the interior

landscape.44

Even if passion should pass,

0 man of the hills

where

after the long tempestuous rains of night 44 A.K. Ramanujam, Is there an Indian way of thinking p.173

the morning's waterfalls

make music in the caverns,

would our love also pass with the passion? (What her friend said to him, Kapilar)

Waterfalls and monsoon rains chart the union of lovers but they are different forms of unions.

The Storm suggests the first release of passion and a waterfall which indicates something

more sustained, partly the result of the storm, partly of its own momentum. The passion has a

landscape and the weather depicts the union of lovers. The landscapes in which a person

lives, represents her in more senses than one. But at the same time we must read it within its

poetry without saying that the “season” or the scene is a metonymy of the Agent etc. The

poetry must be read in its own terms. Our larger agenda is to show how language can be

given a deeper analysis without such dichotomies. Here we cannot impose a Levi Strauss

kind of a nature-culture paradigm, it would make no sense. Here culture is enclosed in nature,

nature is reworked in culture, like forming sheaths/kosas; so that we cannot tell one from the

other. The agent and the scene simulate each other, it’s a man in context, immersed in the

world. These are not symbolic devices and metaphorical talk. A.K. Ramanujam however calls

it as ‘indexical signs- the signifier and the signified belong in the same context’.45 “One might

say from this point of view that Hindu ritual, says Vedic sacrifice, converts symbols, arbitrary

sign (sacrificial horse) into icons where the signifier (horse) is like what it signifies (universe)

and finally into indexes where the signifier is part of what it signifies: the horse is the

universe is the prajapati.”46Clearly such forms of writing lead us into a deeper experience of

language and life itself.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books Referred:

A.K. Ramanujam transl. Poems of Love and War: Anthologies and Long Poems of

Classical Tamil (Oxford India, 1985)

45 ID at 17346 ID at 174

Cambridge Handbook on Metaphor and Thought ed. Raymond W. Gibbs (Cambridge

University Press, 2008)

Martin Heidegger “The Nature of Language” in On The Way To Language

(Harperone, 1982)

Michel Foucault, History of Madness (Routledge, 2006)

“Drunk as a Drunk”: Pablo Neruda Poems (PoemHunter.com, 2005)

Ronald Bruzina “Heidegger on Metaphor and Philosophy” in Heidegger and Modern

Philosophy ed. Michael Murray (Yale University Press, 1978)

Salman Rushdie’s “Enchantress of Florence” (Vermillion, 2009)

Sanjaym Subrahmanyam, D. Schulman, Velacheru Rao, Textures of Time, Writing

History in South-India 1600-1800 (Permanent Black, 2001)

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Everyman Publication, 1973)

William G. Lycan, Introduction to Philosophy of Language, (Routledge, 2nd ed. 2008)

Articles Referred:

A.K. Ramanujam, Is there an Indian way of thinking p.173

Donald Davidson “What Metaphors Mean” Critical Inquiry Vol.5, No.1 (Spl. Issue

on Metaphor) (Autumn,1978) p- 33

Philip Turetzky “Metaphors and Paraphrase” Philosophy & Rhetoric Vol.21, No.3

(1988) p. 205

Thomas Leddy “Davidson’s Rejection of Metaphorical Meaning” Philosophy and

Rhetoric Vol. 16 (No 2 1983) pp. 63-78