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
[email protected]. 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