File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2001/heidegger.0111, message 76


Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 20:55:53 +0100
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)
Subject: Re: Zollikon: Unconscious


Cologne 16-Nov-2001

Michael Staples schrieb  Fri, 16 Nov 2001 06:13:46 -0800:

> Michael,
>
> What is the issue with metaphorical meanings vs. literal meanings?
>
>

Michael,
The issue is how language is to be understood and how we dwell in
language.
The distinction between literal and metaphorical meanings comes
ultimately from Platonic metaphysics in which the sensuously given being
lying before us in the present is distinguished from its true being in
the idea.

Literal meanings refer accordingly to the palpable, concrete object of
sensuous perception, whereas metaphorical meanings point to the
transcendent realm of the ideas.

The way in which metaphorical meanings are talked about today is pretty
much an inversion of this scheme: the concretely present, sensuous being
is 'real' and factual, whereas the metaphorical meaning is a kind of
emblematic image derived from the real, sensuous, present object with a
non-objective, i.e. untrue, merely subjective or 'poetic' status.
Because the metaphors are taken in some vague way as merely poetic
images, and thus as second-rate, from the start, it allows all sorts of
license with metaphors, which can be stretched and twisted at will. One
is then dispensed from any kind of precise thinking.

But if one takes language as pointing to the phenomena themselves and
admits that sensuously given phenomena are just one sort of phenomenon,
then each word has to be taken seriously in itself in its indicating.
This compels us to take more care with words, to give each word its own
specific weight and to think carefully about and listen to what each one
points to. Only in this way can poetic words too regain their full
dignity and weight and not be treated as mere 'imagery'.

Michael
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