Metaphor: Perceiving an Internal Relation

Authors

MÁCHA Jakub

Year of publication 2009
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
web
Field Philosophy and religion
Keywords metaphor;internal relation;aspect;Wittgenstein
Description The problem of metaphor has come to a noteworthy revival in the analytical philosophy of today. Despite all progress that has been made, the majority of important studies consider the function of metaphor as an analogue to visual perception. Such comparison may be conceived as metaphor as well. In his late philosophy, Wittgenstein spent a lot of effort to explain the use of the expression "seeing as". I argue that his explanations can be transposed to the explanation of the function of metaphor. Firstly, it is shown that all earlier attempts to do that are not satisfying. The occurrence of the expression "to see as" in everyday language led Wittgenstein to the elaboration of the notion of "aspect". Primarily these ideas should be employed in order to explain metaphors in everyday or even poetic language. My conclusion is that an internal relation can be perceived and thought of in the metaphor.

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