Paradigms for a metaphorology.pdf - Townsend Humanities Lab

More documents

Recommendations

Info

II Metaphorics of Truth and Pragmatics of Knowledge In the treatise on Alexander Pope he wrote in collaboration with Mendelssohn, Lessing speaks of the philosophical use of what in rhetoric are called ‘figures’, a category that includes metaphor: “And wherein consists the essence of the same?—In their never sticking strictly to the truth; they say now too much, now too little— only a metaphysician of Böhme’s ilk can be forgiven them.” 1 What Lessing raises here is the question of the truth of metaphor itself. It is self-evident that metaphors like that of the power or impotence of truth do not admit of verification, and that the alternative already decided in them one way or the other is theoretically undecidable. Metaphors are unable to satisfy the requirement that truth, by definition, be the result of a methodologically secure procedure 1. Und worin bestehet das Wesen derselben?—Darin, daß sie nie bei der strengen Wahrheit blieben; daß sie bald zu viel, und bald zu wenig sagen— —Nur einem Metaphysiker, von der Gattung eines Böhmens, kann man sie verzeihen. Pope ein Metaphysiker!—Werke, ed. P. Rilla, VII, 233. The paragraph I have just cited was undoubtedly written by Lessing. Compare this statement, published in 1755, with what Bouhours had already written about metaphors in his 1687 text “La manière de bien penser dans les ouvrages de l’esprit”: Le figure n’est pas faux et la métaphore a sa vérité aussi bien que la fiction [Figurative language is not false, and metaphor has its truth just as much as fiction]. On Bouhours’s aesthetics, see E. Cassirer, Die Philosophie der Aufklärung (Tübingen, 1932), 400 ff.
14 Paradigms for a Metaphorology of verification. They therefore not only fail to say ‘nothing but the truth’, they do not say anything truthful at all. Absolute metaphors ‘answer’ the supposedly naïve, in principle unanswerable questions whose relevance lies quite simply in the fact that they cannot be brushed aside, since we do not pose them ourselves but find them already posed in the ground of our existence. We must bear in mind here that a metaphorology cannot result in any method for using metaphors, or for addressing the questions that announce themselves in them. On the contrary: as students of metaphorology, we have already deprived ourselves of the possibility of finding ‘answers’ in metaphors to those unanswerable questions. Metaphor, as the theme of a metaphorology in the sense that will concern us here, is an essentially historical object whose testimonial value presupposes that the witnesses did not possess, and could not have possessed, a metaphorology of their own. Our situation is therefore characterized by the positivistic program of a resolute critique of language in its ‘guiding function’ for our thinking, whereby an expression like ‘true’ becomes immediately superfluous (Ayer), or (or rather and) our situation is characterized by the ‘transference’ of the operation formerly deposited in metaphors to art 2 —the latter taken to persist in unhistorical and unmediated productivity—whereby the urgency of those questions proves to be ungainsayable. The task and method of metaphorology may therefore take us beyond the historical sphere of objects to a selective interpretation of expressive elements in art. Having voiced these reservations, we ask once again about the relevance of absolute metaphors, their historical truth. This truth is pragmatic in a very broad sense. By providing a point of orientation, the content of absolute metaphors determines a particular attitude or conduct [Verhalten]; they give structure to a world, representing the nonexperienceable, nonapprehensible totality of the real. To the historically trained eye, they therefore indicate the fundamental certainties, conjectures, and judgments in relation to which the attitudes and expectations, actions and inactions, longings and disappointments, interests and indifferences, of an epoch are regulated. “What genuine guidance does it give?” 3 This form of the “truth question,” formulated by pragmatism, is pertinent here in a sense that has nothing to do with biology. A question like “What is the world?”, with its demand as imprecise as it is hypertrophic, cannot serve as a point of departure for theoretical discourse; but it 2. Incidentally—but not irrelevantly—these considerations shed light on the contemporary importance of art as the real metaphysical activity of this life (Nietzsche), pertaining to an age that, in its omnivorous will to historical understanding and self-understanding, has almost everywhere destroyed its freedom of genuine expression, and that has created in its art something like a sanctuary, maintained by popular consensus, for a historically conscious ahistoricism. The Absolute, which modern man seems most likely to encounter in his aesthetic experiences (at least if the flourishing metaphysics of art is to be believed), presents itself here as something untouched by the distortions wreaked by historically reflective consciousness. Hence the widespread predilection, seldom differentiating precisely between naïveté and refinement, for “Fauvist” tendencies of all kinds. Just how highly a future metaphorology will rate the documentary value of productive imagination for our age will depend on how we answer the fundamental question as to whether such ekstasis from the historically reflected situation has been successful, indeed whether it can succeed at all. 3. [English in original.]
Page 2 and 3: Paradigms for a Metaphorology
Page 4 and 5: Paradigms for a Metaphorology Hans
Page 6: Contents A Note on the Translation
Page 10 and 11: Introduction Let us try for a momen
Page 12 and 13: Introduction 3 speech had been one
Page 14 and 15: Introduction 5 causality.” Immedi
Page 16 and 17: Metaphorics of the ‘Mighty’ Tru
Page 24 and 25: Metaphorics of Truth and Pragmatics
Page 40 and 41: III A Terminological and Metaphorol
Page 42 and 43: A Terminological and Metaphorologic
Page 50 and 51: Metaphorics of the ‘Naked’ Trut
Page 62 and 63: Terra Incognita and ‘Incomplete U
Page 72 and 73:
Organic and Mechanical Background M
Page 74 and 75:
Page 76 and 77:
Page 78 and 79:
Page 80 and 81:
Page 82 and 83:
Page 84 and 85:
Page 86 and 87:
VII Myth and Metaphorics If we atte
Page 88 and 89:
Myth and Metaphorics 79 ignore the
Page 90 and 91:
VIII Terminologization of a Metapho
Page 92 and 93:
Terminologization of a Metaphor 83
Page 94 and 95:
Page 96 and 97:
Page 98 and 99:
Page 100 and 101:
Page 102 and 103:
Page 104 and 105:
Page 106 and 107:
Page 108 and 109:
IX Metaphorized Cosmology The impre
Page 110 and 111:
Metaphorized Cosmology 101 the diss
Page 112 and 113:
Metaphorized Cosmology 103 not only
Page 114 and 115:
Metaphorized Cosmology 105 again in
Page 116 and 117:
Metaphorized Cosmology 107 pernicus
Page 118 and 119:
Metaphorized Cosmology 109 on the o
Page 120 and 121:
Metaphorized Cosmology 111 Galileo
Page 122 and 123:
Metaphorized Cosmology 113 propriat
Page 124 and 125:
X Geometric Symbolism and Metaphori
Page 126 and 127:
Geometric Symbolism and Metaphorics
Page 128 and 129:
Page 130 and 131:
Page 132 and 133:
Page 134 and 135:
Page 136 and 137:
Page 138 and 139:
Page 140 and 141:
Page 142 and 143:
Translator’s Afterword Metaphorol
Page 144 and 145:
Translator’s Afterword 135 There
Page 146 and 147:
Translator’s Afterword 137 Rothac
Page 148 and 149:
Translator’s Afterword 139 its in
Page 150 and 151:
Translator’s Afterword 141 in whi
Page 152 and 153:
Translator’s Afterword 143 addres
Page 154 and 155:
Translator’s Afterword 145 art of
Page 156 and 157:
Alberti, 67 Albertus Magnus, 6 Alex
Page 158:
Nicolaus of Oresme, 72 Nietzsche, 1
Page 161:
152 Subject Index geometry, 20, 90,
show all

Paradigms for a metaphorology.pdf - Townsend Humanities Lab

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?