The concept of ‘living metaphor’ receives a number of articulations within metaphor theory. A review of four key theories – Nietzsche, Ricoeur, Lakoff and Johnson, and Derrida – reveals a distinction between theories which identify a prior, speculative nature working on or with metaphor, and theories wherein metaphor is shown to be performatively always, already active in thought. The two cannot be left as alternatives because they exhibit opposing theses with regard to the ontology of metaphor, but neither can (...) an impartial philosophical appraisal of the most cogent or defensible theory be made, since the status and conduct of philosophy are part of the problem. Two responses to the predicament from within ‘living metaphor’ theory are considered: (1) Lakoff and Johnson’s ecological spirituality thesis which promises to make the contest redundant on the grounds that the origin of human concepts in our shared, embodied condition in the world removes all obstructions; (2) taking the lead from Nietzsche and Ricoeur, an approach based on the intersection of discourses, not as a resolution but as a gesture which allows the conflict to speak about ‘living metaphor’. (1) is shown to be unsuccessful, but (2) results in ‘living metaphor’ emerging as an attentiveness to questions of what does and does not belong, inspired by tensions between ‘is’ and ‘is not’, ‘from this perspective’ and ‘from that perspective’, and ‘is spoken about’ and ‘is spoken with’. (shrink)

This article presents the conceptual groundwork for a “poetics of the self” by theorizing how and why a creative praxis rooted in Ricoeur’s philosophy of the will and hermeneutics of the living metaphor contributes to an individual’s on-going development of self-awareness. Its focus is on the affective fragility that manifests in an individual’s intermediary status of polarities – finitude and infinitude, freedom and nature – in conjunction with Ricœur’s tensional status of metaphorical truth. The act of writing poetry, it (...) suggests, can be an aesthetic mediation that develops insight into the primordial discord of the servile will. (shrink)

The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"--metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our (...) ever noticing them. In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language. (shrink)

The usage of metaphor in languages for specific purposes has been in the focus of interest of cognitive linguistics for years, especially after Lakoff and Johnson published their famous book “Metaphors We Live by” in 1980. Inspired by that book, the author strives to prove that metaphor was not only intensely present in the history of law but also that it pervades the language of contemporary legal theory and practice. Terms like _injury of law, the burden of evidence, soft (...) laws, hard laws,_ etc. are so often used by lawyers in their professional communication that they are hardly recognizable as metaphors. In the theoretical part, the terms _conceptual metaphor_ and _lexical metaphor_, as well as _the source domain_ and _the target domain of the metaphor_ are defined. Accordingly, conceptual metaphor and lexical metaphor are interpreted from the perspective of the language of law. As an introduction to the discussion on metaphoric terms in the field of law, a number of metaphors is presented and discussed from the point of view of legal history, as the metaphoric and other poetic expressions were recognized as the features of legalese back in the early seventeenth century. In the main part, the author presents and discusses the most common conceptual metaphors in connection with the terms _law, justice, court,_ and the types of metaphors typically used in specific branches of law as criminal law, company law, and contract law. The empirical part of the paper is focused on two research tasks. Firstly, metaphors occurring in selected Legal English textbooks are explored and discussed by using a qualitative and a quantitative approach, and secondly, metaphoric terms and phrases of the EU Law are excerpted from the Treaty Establishing the European Community (Consolidated version 2002), the main task being to establish the frequency of metaphors in this relatively young branch of law and the types of conceptual metaphors they belong to. In the closing part, conclusions on similarities and differences in the use of metaphor between two different types of legal texts are drawn with specific reference to the frequency, lexical structures, and typology of conceptual metaphors in the field of law. (shrink)

Health metaphors are commonly used in a variety of contexts. While war metaphors are common in medicine, there are also other conceptualizations and other metaphors employed in different contexts. In policies, metaphors can play an important role in framing thought and discourse, and have an important effect, and even more so in educational policy. In this article, we analyze the two South African policies regarding HIV and AIDS in the educational context – the first policy from (...) 1999, and the one that replaced it in 2017. The focus is on identifying and categorizing the metaphors directly related to HIV and AIDS. We identified 29 such metaphors in policy 1, and 71 in policy 2, using the principles from the MIPVU, and thematic discourse analysis was used to categorize the metaphors into themes. The most prominent changes in the metaphors from policy 1 to policy 2 regard the focus of the imagery, as well as the conceptualization of HIV itself. These are then interpreted in the Southern African context. (shrink)

Within biology and in society, living creatures have long been described using metaphors of machinery and computation: ‘bioengineering’, ‘genes as code’ or ‘biological chassis’. This paper builds on Lakoff and Johnson’s argument that such language mechanisms shape how we understand the world. I argue that the living machines metaphor builds upon a certain perception of life entailing an idea of radical human control of the living world, looking back at the historical preconditions for this metaphor. I (...) discuss how design is perceived to enable us to shape natural beings to our will, and consider ethical, epistemological and ontological implications of the prevalence of this metaphor, focusing on its use within synthetic biology. I argue that we urgently need counter-images to the dominant metaphor of living machines and its implied control and propose that artworks can provide such counter-images through upsetting the perception of life as controllable. This is argued through discussion of artworks by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, by Tarsh Bates and by Ai Hasegawa, which in different ways challenge mechanistic assumptions through open-ended engagement with the strangeness and messiness of life. (shrink)

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

This research article focuses on the use of the water metaphor in column 16 of the Hodayot. Previous scholarship has often concentrated on the garden metaphor in this section, particularly on its intertextual links with the book of Isaiah. By drawing on contemporary metaphor theory, in particular blending theory, I show how the author of the Hodayot creates poetry through a multiple blended network of garden and water metaphors, and how aspects of the linguistic form of the poem, in (...) particular the phrase מבוע מים חיים‘well of living waters’, can be read as an expression of this blend. The aim of this study is to contribute (1) to the study of the Hodayot and its poetic practices, against older dismissals of the poetic quality of the Hodayot, and (2) to our understanding of semantic constellations and the conceptual world of ancient Judaism. Contribution: This article fits within the scope of HTS’s theme ‘Historical Thought and Source Interpretation’ as it contributes to our insights into ancient Jewish thought through the interpretation of a religious source text using metaphor theory. (shrink)

Shepard has supposed that the mind is stocked with innate knowledge of the world and that this knowledge figures prominently in the way we see the world. According to him, this internal knowledge is the legacy of a process of internalization; a process of natural selection over the evolutionary history of the species. Shepard has developed his proposal most fully in his analysis of the relation between kinematic geometry and the shape of the motion path in apparent motion displays. We (...) argue that Shepard has made a case for applying the principles of kinematic geometry to the perception of motion, but that he has not made the case for injecting these principles into the mind of the percipient. We offer a more modest interpretation of his important findings: that kinematic geometry may be a model of apparent motion. Inasmuch as our recommended interpretation does not lodge geometry in the mind of the percipient, the motivation of positing internalization, a process that moves kinematic geometry into the mind, is obviated. In our conclusion, we suggest that cognitive psychologists, in their embrace of internal mental universals and internalization may have been seduced by the siren call of metaphor. Key Words: apparent motion; imagery; internalization; inverse projection problem; kinematic geometry; measurement; metaphors of mind. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore how metaphor is mobilized to frame and describe the lived experience of dementia in a corpus of illness narratives compiled from 10 blogs initiated and maintained by individuals diagnosed with early-onset dementia. The article is set against the background of contemporary healthcare practices and discourse around chronic illness and focuses on the metaphors that patients use to communicate about their dementia experience in relation to three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence and (...) relatedness, which are essential for human well-being and are heavily challenged in complex medical situations. Results are discussed in terms of the framing metaphors provide of the emotional, psychological impact of dementia and their implications for patient-centered care. This study expands prior work by researching metaphors used for a condition that has been scarcely explored from this point of view and by focusing on the patient’s perspective exclusively. (shrink)

In recent years a large component of my reading has involved difficult texts on theological method, epistemology, and neuro-psychology. What I present in this article in significant respects is a simplified conflation of this reading that contributes some original elements in a paradigmatic approach to 'doing theology'. For this reason, I generally do not engage in specific citations within my text, and instead include at the end of the article some remarks on some of my reading. My main purpose is (...) to use a manner of speaking or writing - using extended metaphors - to make it more accessible to readers who want to 'do theology' in their own lives and in their ministries, rather than grapple with more formal presentations of what is treated. (shrink)

The extent to which machine metaphors are used in synthetic biology is striking. These metaphors contain a specific perspective on organisms as well as on scientific and technological progress. Expressions such as “genetically engineered machine”, “genetic circuit”, and “platform organism”, taken from the realms of electronic engineering, car manufacturing, and information technology, highlight specific aspects of the functioning of living beings while at the same time hiding others, such as evolutionary change and interdependencies in ecosystems. Since these (...) latter aspects are relevant for, for example, risk evaluation of uncontained uses of synthetic organisms, it is ethically imperative to resist the thrust of machine metaphors in this respect. In addition, from the perspective of the machine metaphor viewing an entity as a moral agent or patient becomes dubious. If one were to regard living beings, including humans, as machines, it becomes difficult to justify ascriptions of moral status. Finally, the machine metaphor reinforces beliefs in the potential of synthetic biology to play a decisive role in solving societal problems, and downplays the role of alternative technological, and social and political measures. (shrink)

This dissertation focuses on the problem of novelty as seen from the perspective of two French philosophers: Paul Ricoeur and Gilles Deleuze. As such, a new interpretation of the works of these two philosophers is developed. I argue that two models can be derived from their works: a model that strives to make tensions productive (based on Ricoeur) and a model that aims to organize encounters between bodies (taken from Deleuze). These models are developed on their own terms without superimposing (...) one over the other. Hence, the first part of the dissertation focuses on Ricoeur, the second on Deleuze. Through an extensive reading of Ricoeur’s La métaphore vive, it is shown that the living metaphor creates a productive tension in which two previously distinct domains are drawn together. This results in a semantic innovation that first appears as an image and only later can be conceptualized. This argument is further developed by analyzing Augustine’s notion ‘time is a distention of the mind (distentio animi)’ as an example of how a living metaphor introduces a new language that re-describes reality. This example prepares the way for broadening the model of productive tensions by showing how, from Ricoeur’s perspective, the innovative potential of actions can be understood in terms of a productive tension between two orders of imagination. In contrast to Ricoeur, Deleuze’s conception of novelty is not analyzed in terms of a productive tension between two heterogeneous domains, but in terms of an encounter between bodies in which a creative coupling or an affective relation emerges that links these bodies together in a common trajectory. On the basis of a reading of Deleuze’s essays on literature, it is shown how such an encounter can give rise to a single process of metamorphosis. This process can be divided in two closely connected moments: a mutual metamorphosis that sets the whole process in motion and a continuous metamorphosis of proliferating series that keeps it alive. This first, intuitive understanding of the model is deepened by linking it to a metamorphic ontology of expression that is derived from Deleuze’s works on Spinoza. This provides the model with a more rigorous vocabulary and also shows in how these encounters can be organized in such a way that they create the conditions for novelty in three forms of thinking: science, art, and philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: What's in Santa's Mind? How We Know Anything We Know Santa as a Moral Exemplar Santa the Moral Accountant Santa as Moral Authority Example of Santa in Action: A Christmas Story Santa as Karma Embodied Conclusion.

We discuss the difference between formal and natural languages, and argue that should the language metaphor have any foundation, it’s analogy with natural languages that should be taken into account. We discuss how such operation like reading, writing, sign, interpretation, etc., can be applied in the realm of the living and what can be gained, by such an approach, in order to understand the phenomenon of life.

This essay makes two points: (a) Dualities between implicit and explicit?like the older ones between body and mind, primary and secondary process, nonverbal and symbolic, inner and outer, unconscious and conscious, emotion and cognition, and so on?can be understood as poles on a complex continuum of experience or as aspects of complex experiential systems; and (b) metaphor in dialogue can create a process of understanding between people and aspects of their experience that seem, on the face of it, to be (...) very far apart or even beyond comprehension. (shrink)

F. Nietzsche does interesting indications on the anthropological foundation of language in his lessons on classical rhetoric, at the University of Basel in 1874. Many quotations of Gerber and Humboldt, and older notions, drawn from the Aristotle's Rhetoric are discussed in this dissertation. Many studies highlighted Nietzsche's attempts during thirty years (1976-2006) to draw a consistent anthropological foundation of the language. Some of them shed light on the metaphor, described from the point of view of anthropology, as an innovative perspective (...) on the philosophy of rhetoric. Would metaphor be a verbal vehicles for conveying scientific and philosophical concepts by attaching unusual importance to the veracity or the truthfulness of a claim? Is that in contradiction to any conceptual truth? Some interpreters suggest that metaphors seen as linguistic products fail to explain the unnatural way meaning is transmitted from the unconscious musicality of language. If imperceptible bonds move the meaning of a word in the musicality of language, then to transmit a message by non verbal means or metaphors relates to a subjectively felt musicality of language. Meaning is expressed, not because there are words with fixed meaning in a conventional way, but because the word is seen in the first place as an action. Living language, seen as metaphorical by essence, is a view shared by German idealism, on the so-called origins of language. A consequence of this view on language is a wide reinterpretation of the reason, from the point of view of a rhetorical turn. Schopenhauer, Von Hartmann and Lichtenberg are some thinkers who pointed out the possibility of a pan-psychist notion of reason that inspired Nietzsche, and later Piaget (e. g. his theory of analogy is built on similar roots). A first part of this dissertation presents the historical genesis of doctrines that don't see language as an innate substratum of the conscious mind, but as rhetorical and conditioned by environment in the wide sense. In the second part, we read the main arguments of contemporary studies in cognitive sciences, discovering new structural similarities compared to the 19th Century views of Nietzsche. In the third part, we discuss the form of poetic imagination regarding a relation between metaphor and melancholy in Greek empirical medicine. (shrink)

A cross-linguistic/cultural study of verbal metaphor compares responses to terrorism in the UK (N = 96) and to urban violence in Brazil (N = 11). Focus groups discussed how violence changes perceptions of risk, decisions of daily life, and attitudes to others. Metaphor vehicles were identified in transcribed data, then grouped together semantically; 15 vehicle groupings were used with similar frequencies, 16 groupings more in UK data, 14 more in Brazil data. Systematic and framing metaphors were found inside vehicle (...) groupings. A small set of frequent verbal metaphors work as predicted by conceptual metaphor theory. Other verbal metaphor vehicles work much more specifically, as posited by discourse dynamics theory, metaphorizing contextually distinct aspects of living with violence. Major differences were found in responses to violence: UK participants demonstrate feelings of powerlessness and lack of agency through metaphor vehicles relating to Games of Chance, the Concealed nature of terrorist activity, and Body Postures negatively evaluating response from the authorities; Brazilian participants use metaphor vehicles of Violence to emphasize how the threat of urban violence itself becomes a powerful social force that constrains daily activities. (shrink)

This article stages a critical-philosophical encounter between Derridean deconstruction and Peircean biosemiotic theory focussing on the role and status of metaphor within each. It argues that the biosemiotic understanding of metaphor as a structuring principle informing the sign-activity of living organisms and processes offers an alternative understanding of a generalised metaphoricity of life as such and an account of what might be called biological text, textuality or even, biosemiotic intertextuality. The article argues that biological textuality obeys a logic of (...) semiotic immanence that is distinct from the logic of différance and of the quasi-transcendental as thought by Derrida. On this basis it elaborates the way in which metaphor in biosemiotic theory, and also the generalised biological metaphoricity informing the text of life, function as radically non-representational, inferential, and hermeneutic operators which model the semiotic processes of life and thereby enable an epistemologically weak or, in a certain sense, non-philosophical realism. (shrink)

Metaphors of nature and organism play a central role in the epistemes of the Western culture and arts. The entire project of the 'modern' meant a separation of man from the cosmos and its laws. Signs and symbols are thought to be arbitrary and conventional social constructions. However, there are many returns to iconic imitations of nature and biological principles also in such an esoteric art as music. One of the highest aesthetic categories in Western art music is the (...) so-called 'organic growth' which particularly manifests in symphony. The concepts of 'organic/inorganic' can be used as analytic terms, whereby one might even compare such composers as Jean Sibelius and Gustav Mahler. Music is said to be 'organic' when (I) its theme actors live in their proper Umwelt (or isotopy); (2) all music material stems from the same themes (it is innerly iconic); (3) all musical events follow each other coherently (inner indexicality or the principle of Growth); (4) music strives for some goal (temporality). Moreover the Ueküll idea of a particular lch-Ton of every organism can be turned back to music. Hence we can say that every musical piece is like an 'organism' which has its lch-Ton detennining which signs it accepts and how it acts in the musical environmentof its own and formed by other musical works. (shrink)

The category WOMEN is a central analytic category of feminism, but has been very troubled in feminist theory and philosophy. In the background of the troubles with the category WOMEN is the metaphoric image of a social category as a set and its exemplars as set members. But the category WOMEN cannot be defined as sets are defined, so that is an inappropriate metaphor. A number of feminists and race theorists turn to Wittgenstein, who offers alternative metaphors. This chapter (...) explores the powers and resonances of his metaphors—in the case of “family resemblance,” using the work of cognitive psychologists Rosch and Mervis on categories that have prototype structure. (shrink)

The metaphor between physical light and inner light has a long history that permeates diverse languages and cultures. This paper outlines a system for using basic principles from optics to visually represent psychological states and processes, such as ideation, enlightenment, mindfulness, and fragmentation versus integrity, as well as situations that occur between people involving phenomena such as honest versus deceptive communication, and understanding versus misunderstanding. The paper summarizes two ongoing projects based on this system: The ‘Light and Enlightenment” art installation (...) project, and the Soultracker virtual reality project. These projects enable people to depict their inner lives and external worlds including situations and relationships with others, both as they are and as they could be, and explore alternative paths for navigating challenges and living to their fullest potential. The projects aim to be of clinical value as therapeutic tools, as well as of pedagogical value by providing a concrete language for depicting aspects of human nature that can otherwise seem elusive and intangible. (shrink)

Genes are often described by biologists using metaphors derived from computa- tional science: they are thought of as carriers of information, as being the equivalent of ‘‘blueprints’’ for the construction of organisms. Likewise, cells are often characterized as ‘‘factories’’ and organisms themselves become analogous to machines. Accordingly, when the human genome project was initially announced, the promise was that we would soon know how a human being is made, just as we know how to make airplanes and buildings. Impor- (...) tantly, modern proponents of Intelligent Design, the latest version of creationism, have exploited biologists’ use of the language of information and blueprints to make their spurious case, based on pseudoscientific concepts such as ‘‘irreducible complexity’’ and on flawed analogies between living cells and mechanical factories. However, the living organ- ism = machine analogy was criticized already by David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. In line with Hume’s criticism, over the past several years a more nuanced and accurate understanding of what genes are and how they operate has emerged, ironically in part from the work of computational scientists who take biology, and in particular developmental biology, more seriously than some biologists seem to do. In this article we connect Hume’s original criticism of the living organism = machine analogy with the modern ID movement, and illustrate how the use of misleading and outdated metaphors in science can play into the hands of pseudoscientists. Thus, we argue that dropping the blueprint and similar metaphors will improve both the science of biology and its understanding by the general public. (shrink)

This article highlights the contemporary relevance of Macmurray’s work for the turn in philosophy of religion towards living religion. The traditional academic focus on belief analyses cognitive dissonance from a distance, and misses the experience of being religious. Alternatively, in an astute move ahead of his time, Macmurray emphasized emotion and action over theory and cognition; he examined religion as the creation and sustenance of community, over and above doctrinal division and incompatible beliefs. From an understanding of humans as (...) embodied and relational, Macmurray critiques individualism and self-sacrifice for failing to result in othercentred action and the promotion of social justice and equality. Using Macmurray as a springboard, this article considers the new speech acts of digital media and the possibility of community in online religion, finding that the virtual world holds both the risk of threats of violence and hate, as well as advantages for women and other marginalized groups to have a voice and explore diverse religious practices and identities, including reimagining metaphors and symbols to have relevance and meaning in changed social circumstances. In conclusion, this article finds that online communities are significant for the spiritual practice of the religiously affiliated and religious ‘nones’, as such, online religion is relevant to the understanding of living religion aimed at in philosophy. (shrink)

Willpower is a metaphor that is widespread in both common usage and expert literature across disciplines. This paper looks into willpower as a ‘metaphor we live by’, analyzing and exploring the consequences of the tacit information content of the willpower metaphor for agentive self-understanding and efficacy. In addition to contributing to stigma associated with self-control failures, the metaphor causally contributes to self-control failures by obscuring available self-control strategies and instructing agents to superfluous self-control efforts.