Metaphor: Poetry, Philosophy, Rhetoric

Abstract

This article works backwards by contextualizing the metaphorical explosion of metaphor, especially in the last century or so, and works back to Plato and Aristotle, who help us to see the outlines of metaphor in relation to poetics, rhetoric, philosophy and politics, as well as the critical and theoretical issues arising subsequently down to the present age, including the views of Zoltán Kövecses, Northrop Frye, Paul Ricoeur, Hegel, Shakespeare, Thomas Aquinas and others. The nub of the matter is whether metaphor helps us get at the core of philosophy, that is truth, justice and beauty, the good life, or whether it deflects and deludes or both. My argument is that they do both for Plato and even for Aristotle, who is less severe on poetry and on poetic mimesis than is Plato. This friction between actual and fictional worlds might be resolved or at least meet in the possible.