Page 179 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

of rhetorical syllogism, looser than the strictly logical forms but vital to the art of manipulating the 'prob- able.' For both of them, metaphor gives energeia which means 'force, vigor,' or, as the Loeb edition interestingly translates it, 'actuality.' But Aristotle makes an important distinction between metaphor and simile:
For the simile, as we have said, is a metaphor differing only by the addition of a word, wherefore it is less pleasant because it is longer, it does not say this is that, so that the mind does not even examine this.
[Author's italics]
It follows that the characteristic compression and enigma of metaphor makes the mind of the beholder entertain something not immediately understandable and thus 'a kind of knowledge (oion mathesis) results.' Metaphor, says Aristotle, is proportionate or ana- logical (kat 'analogical), and sets things 'before the eyes.' But he insists that the analogy should be between things that are unlike or resistant to an extent, 'just as, for instance, in philosophy it needs sagacity to grasp the similarity in things that are apart...' And he goes on to link this energeia to the defeat of expectations:
Most smart sayings are derived from metaphor, and also from misleading the hearer beforehand. For it becomes evident to him that he has learnt something, when the conclusion turns out contrary to his expectation, and the mind seems to say, 'How true it is! but I missed it.'
Metaphors are like jokes and philosophical para- doxes. This is not an assimilation of metaphor to simile, nor is it a simple view of metaphor as compari- son. Aristotle's more famous structural insistence in the Poetics on the analogical proportion idea in meta- phor—B is to A as D is to C—needs to be put in the context of the above remarks because they show that analogy has plenty of room to include the idea of implicit meaning (the distance of the elements one from another and the suppressed aspects of analogy) and is a source of wit, or a contrast between appear- ance and reality. This is a more mentalistic view of metaphor than the Roman Quintilian's recipe-book approach to the store of ornamental figures.
2. The Platonic Tradition: Metaphor and the Paradox of Representation
Plato (429-347 BC) does not have a View' of metaphor stated in any one place like Aristotle. Nevertheless his dialogues abound in examples and ideas about the significance of metaphor and figurative language which—deeply ambiguous as they are—have proved enormously influential, especially on the practice of poetry. There are two lines of thought in Plato, both of which are sometimes found within the same dialogue. One is that all language originates in metaphor and figuration. The Cratylus, for example, represents an often playful and obscure enquiry into the origins
of language in which Socrates mounts a critique of representation—the names for abstractions like 'truth' and 'necessity' are broken down into their earlier elements which point (figuratively) towards the 'true' elements (by metaphor) of our current speech, which we have forgotten—hence the word for 'truth,' for example, i.e., aletheia, 'really' means 'a divinewan- dering' because it is made up of the elements ale and theia, or necessity means 'walking through a ravine' because 'necessary' (anangkaion) is made up of an angke ion meaning literally 'going through a ravine.' In this way, argues Socrates, perhaps abstract language itself—and therefore the very language of definition—contains hidden figuration and is an ex- tended metaphor whose origins perpetually threaten its ability to represent abstractly.
However, metaphor reveals the traces of its divine origin, for 'speech' says Socrates, punning on the Greek words for 'they speak' and 'everything' (pan), 'signifies all things':
Socrates You are aware that speech signifies all things (pan) and is always turning them round and round, and has two forms, true and false.
Hermogenes Certainly.
Socrates Is not the truth that is in him the smooth or sacred form which dwells above among the Gods, whereas falsehood dwells among men below, and is rough like the goat of tragedy, for tales and falsehoods have generally to do with the tragic or goatish life, and tragedy is the place of them?
Hermogenes Very true.
Socrates Then surely, Pan, who is the declarer of all things (pan) and the perpetual mover (aei polon) of all things, is rightly called aipolos (goatherd), he being the two-formed son of Hermes, smooth in his upper part, and rough and goat-like in his lower regions. And, as the son of Hermes, he is speech or the brother of speech, and that brother should be like brother is no marvel.
Language is portrayed, metaphorically, as a satyr: through a grasp of its perpetually dual form—i.e., analogy—one can get glimpses of the truth it can offer. The other view playfully expressed here is that language is perpetually unstable, untrustworthy, and quite unsatisfactory for reasoning with, because it can never identify absolutely with what it seeks to picture and therefore can only be, at best, an approximation to an inner truth. Skepticism about representation in language is thus inseparable from a self-consciousness about the figurative. But Plato, the enemy of poets in the Republic, gives the grounds here for a profound defense of metaphor as a positive instrument of thought.
Later, in the Medieval and Renaissance periods, Nature becomes a book written by God, and, in a common extension of the metaphor, language is again thought of as a repository of hidden analogies and correspondences which form—to use the usual sub- or associated metaphor—the signatures or traces of God's presence. This view also uses the technique
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