Metaphors: Figures of the Mind

Book excerpt: This book deals with various aspects of metaphorics and yet it is not only, or perhaps not even primarily, about metaphor itself. Rather it is concerned with the argument from metaphor. In other words, it is about what I think we can learn from metaphor and the possible consequences of this lesson for a more adequate understanding, for instance, of our mental processes, the possibilities and limitations of our reasoning, the strictures of propositionality, the cognitive effect of fictional projections and so on. In this sense it is not, strictly speaking, a contribution to metaphorology; instead, it is an attempt to define the place of metaphor in the world of overall human intellectual activity, exemplary thematized here in the span that ranges from problems relating to the articulation of meanings up to general issues of creativity. Most of the aspects discussed, therefore, are examined not so much for the sake of gaining some new knowledge about metaphor (work conducted in the »science of metaphor« is presently so huge that an extra attempt to spell out another theory of metaphor may have an infiatory effect); the basic strategy of this book is to view metaphor within the complex of language usage and language competence, in human thought and action, and, finally, to see in what philosophically relevant way it improves our knowledge of ourselves. Certainly, by adopting this basic strategy we also simultaneously increase our knowledge of metaphors, of their functions and importance.