From: HealantHenry-AT-aol.com
Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2002 17:37:47 EST
Subject: Re: Method



In a message dated 23/02/2002 4:46:00 PM, pennamacoor-AT-enterprise.net writes:

<< That being exceeds any metaphoricity is
something I'm attuned to, but how that relates to a conception of a 'literal'
philosophical discourse I'm not at all sure of... Perhaps the opposition
literal/metaphorical is not a 'proper' binary opposition...

The rigmarole is my attempt at just dancing (spinning, quaking, pogoing): I 
can dance to
the early Stones, Bach and Joy Division but... >>

Seņor P,
Without "going up into the attic" (and there are at least three levels of 
meaning in those last five words), Ricoeur falls upon metaphor as thirsty man 
to a spring from whence aquavit appears to flow. 

Metaphor an sich splays itself across the transcendental path of language/Big 
B as the key. It is the emblem of his interpretation theory, the central 
event of meaning arrived in the synthetic acts of explaining and 
understanding, of receiving the text, from within the horizon of the textual 
explanation and from out[standing] in the horizon of the reader, thereby 
conspiring "meaning."

Thus the jump to knowledge lands landed on a land, unsure, but doubly posited 
with the meanings of the textual construct and the backgrounded reader. In 
this meeting of text and reader (Just as the Prince howls "All are 
punish-ED!" So, Ricoeur, "All are text'd. All are texts!") in this merger of 
explanation and understanding comes "meaning," yea, but already always a 
surplus of meaning.

The quickness of language is metaphor, that exterior layer just under the 
bark, while all the inner layers lie dead, analytical, and fixed (the Druids 
would/wood have told us this had they not fled with the gods, forsaking us). 

And, once the metaphor dies unto a fixedness and analyzable, fitted for the 
clothes of analytic a priori, to be couched in featherless bipedal verses, to 
be thus and so, and thus and so, metaphor is not, and an explanation is born. 
But with each borning/boring explanation, like the ringing of the bell 
harkens the creation of another sweet Clarence, more metaphor than bachelor 
qua unmarried man, lies strong upon the horizon of Dasein. If questioning is 
the piety, metaphor is the living breath.

I'll get me to my attic if thou persists, 
it's just another moonlight mile UP the road...

Kindest regards,
Hen


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