Page 180 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Truth and Meaning
of 'poetic etymology' which purports to uncover the original metaphors of language itself. So Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86), who claimed in his Apologie For Poetrie (1595) that only the poets can recreate the 'golden world,' is borrowing the technique of Socrates in the Cratylus.
This self-conscious view of the conceptual paradox posed by metaphor in representation was systematized by one continental eighteenth-century philosopher. One can see the Platonist influence in the The New Science (1725) of the Italian protostructuralist thin- ker, Vico (1668-1744)—particularly in the important place given to metaphor in Vico's inquiries into the origin of languages. Vico proposes a universal four- fold development for every national culture; and to every phase he gives a rhetorical master trope, begin- ning with the original of all perception: 'metaphor.' Then follow 'metonymy,' 'synecdoche,' 'irony.' Language originates in metaphor in this tradition; and culture, in epic.
3. Empiricism
In the latter half of the seventeenth century, a new hostility to metaphor emerged. The English empiricist Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) in his treatise Leviathan (1651), classified metaphor as an 'abuse of speech': ' . . . when they [men] use words metaphorically; that is, in other sense than they are ordained for; and thereby deceive others' (1651: 102). Hobbes conceives of language as a kind of 'naming' and the problem he seeks, as a result, to solve is the problem of'inconstant signification':
For one man calleth Wisdome, what another calleth feare; and one cruelty, what another justice; one gravity, what another stupidity, etc... And therefore such names can never be true grounds of any ratiocination. No more can metaphors, and tropes of speech: but these are less dangerous, because they profess their inconstancy; which
the other do not.
Here one sees graphically the decline of rhetoric: Hobbes has a profound distrust of metaphor, but his 'realism' contradicts what Aristotle has to say by suggesting that metaphor always declares itself as deceptive. This view initiated the cult of the plain style.
Later, John Locke (1632-1704), in his Essay Con- cerning Human Understanding (1690), also tackled the problem of the 'unsteady uses of words.' He regards language as a process of labeling, and the 'reform of language'—i.e., the precedence of the 'literal' over all figurationisexplicitlyapartoftheage'santirhetorical project. Like the Puritan side of Plato, Locke is deeply suspicious of abstractions but also equally so of meta- phor and simile. Metaphor is thus not distinguished from any other form of figuration—all of which for Locke are ruled by one prior law; the association of ideas. The satire of Laurence Sterne (1713-68) in Tristram Shandy (1760-67) employs metaphor
directly at the expense of Locke's association of ideas principle, obeying it and yet triumphantly violating it at the same moment:
—My young Master in London is dead! said Obadiah. —A green satin night-gown of my mother's, which had been twice scoured, was the first idea which Obadiah's exclamation brought into Susannah's head.—Well might Lockewriteachapterupontheimperfections ofwords.— —Then, quoth Susannah, we must all go into mourn- ing—But note a second time: the word mourning not- withstanding Susannah made use of it herself—failed also of doing its office; it excited not one single idea, tinged either with grey or black,—all was green,—The green satin night-gown hung there still.
[Author's italics]
This passage is a perfect illustration of Locke's theory that thought and language are ruled by the association of ideas, except that the association is not the con- ventional one between mourning and black which it should universally be, according to Locke, but a pri- vate one, based on a combination of desire and habit which is so dominant that Susannah's mind is trans- formed, comically, by metaphor, into a wardrobe. The separation, vital for Locke's whole theory, between the idea in the mind and the thing being thought of, is eroded. It is Sterne's metaphor 'hung there' which creates this satirical refutation: this metaphor will not unpack properly into idea and thing, and therefore is not replaceable by a 'concrete,' 'simple,' or 'literal' paraphrase without loss of significance.
4. Neoclassicism
'As to metaphorical expression,' said Samuel Johnson (1709-84), 'that is a great excellence in style, when it is used with propriety, for it gives you two ideas for one.' Neoclassical attitudes to metaphor are founded on the linguistic pragmatism of the Roman, as opposed to the psychological subtlety of the Greek writers. Horace's (65-8BC)highly pragmatic update of parts of Aristotle's thinking in the Ars Poetica (ca. 17BC) is mainly concerned with such things as appropriateness, decorum, and consistency: sig- nificantly, it does not mention metaphor.
An example of what Johnson means is in his famous emendation of the speech of Shakespeare's Macbeth at v, iii, 27-8; 'My way of life/Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow Leafe,' which Johnson amended to 'My May of Life' on the grounds of metaphorical propriety. The result, which reveals the prejudices of the age, is a rococo prettification, in the name of consistency, of something that strikes the ear as mass- ive and rugged. It is likely that Shakespeare felt 'way of life' to be a metaphorical expression, but if Johnson thought of it as a metaphor at all, then it was an inconsistent one which made the whole line meta- phorically mixed. He reconstructed the phrase on the assumption of a compositor's error, thus restoring the
158