Metaphor and Phenomenology

The term “contemporary phenomenology” refers to a wide area of 20th and 21st century
philosophy where the study of consciousness occupies center stage. Since the appearance of
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and subsequent developments in phenomenology and
hermeneutics after Husserl, it is no longer possible to view consciousness only as a scientific
object of study. The phenomenological attitude posits consciousness as the precondition for any
sort of meaningful experience, even the simple apprehension of objects in the world. While the
basic features of consciousness – intentionality, self-awareness, embodiment, and so forth—
have been the focus of analysis, Continental philosophers such as Paul Ricoeur and Jacques
Derrida go further and add a linguistically creative dimension. They argue that metaphor and
symbol act as the primary interpreters of reality, generating richer layers of perception,
expression, and meaning in speculative thought. The interplay of metaphor and phenomenology
introduces serious challenges and ambiguities within long-standing assumptions in the history of
Western philosophy, largely with respect to the strict divide between the literal and figurative
modes of reality based in the correspondence theory of truth. Since the end of the 20th century,
the role of metaphor in the production of cognitive structures has been taken up and extended in
new productive directions, including “naturalized phenomenology” and cognitive science,
notably in the work of G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, M. Turner, D. Zahavi, and S. Gallagher.

Table of Contents

1. Overview
1. The Conventional View: Aristotle’s Contribution to Substitution Model
2. The Philosophical Issues
3. Nietzsche’s Role in Development of Phenomenological Theories of Metaphor
2. The Phenomenological Theory in Continental Philosophy
1. Phenomenological Method: Husserl
2. Heidegger’s Contribution
3. Existential Phenomenology: Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics, and Metaphor
1. The Mechanics of Conceptual Blending
2. The Role of Kant’s Schematism in Conceptual Blending
4. Jacques Derrida: Metaphor as Metaphysics
1. The Dispute between Ricoeur and Derrida
5. Anglo-American Philosophy: Interactionist Theories
6. Metaphor, Phenomenology, and Cognitive Science
1. The Embodied Mind
2. The Literary Mind
7. Conclusion
8. References and Further Reading

1. Overview
This article highlights the definitive points in the ongoing philosophical conversation about
metaphorical language and it’s centrality in phenomenology. The phenomenological

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interpretation of metaphor is a radical departure from the conventional analysis of metaphor. The
conventional view, largely inherited from Aristotle, is also known as the “substitution model.” In
this now standard view, the uses and applications of metaphor have been restricted to (along with
other related symbolic phenomena/tropes) the realms of rhetoric and poetics.

While somewhat contested, the standard substitution theory, also referred to as the “similarity
theory,” generally defines metaphor as a stylistic literary device involving a deviant and dyadic
movement which shifts meaning from one word to another. Metaphor is none other than a kind
of categorical mistake, a deviance of sense produced in order to create a lively effect. This view,
first articulated by Aristotle, reinforces the epistemic primacy of the literal in natural language
used in first-order description. Metaphor can only operate as a secondary device, one which is
dependent on the prior level of direct description. Aristotle notes that in many cases, the relation
between two orders, literal and figurative, has been interpreted as an implicit simile, which
expresses a “this is that” structure. For example, in Poetics he states:

When the poet says of Achilles that he “Leapt on the foe as a lion,” this is a simile; when he says
of him, “the lion leapt” it is a metaphor—here, since both are courageous, [Homer] has
transferred to Achilles the name of “lion.” (1406b 20-3)

In purely conventional terms, poetic language can only be said to refer to itself; that is, it can
accomplish imaginative description through metaphorical attribution, but the description does
not refer to any sort of real external object. For the purposes of traditional rhetoric and poetics in
the Aristotelian mode, metaphor may serve many purposes; it can be clever, creative, or
eloquent, but never true in terms of referring to new propositional content. This is due to the
restriction of comparison to substitution, such that the cognitive impact of the metaphoric
transfer of meaning is produced by assuming similarities between literal and figurative domains
of objects and the descriptive predicates attributed to them.

The phenomenological interpretation of metaphor, however, not only challenges the substitution
model, it advances the role of metaphor far beyond the limits of traditional rhetoric. In the
Continental tradition, extensive treatments of metaphor’s place in phenomenology are found in
the work of Martin Heidegger, Paul Ricoeur and Jacques Derrida. They all, in slightly different
ways, see figurative language as a primary vehicle, enabling the disclosure and creation of new
forms of meaning which emerge from an ontological, rather than purely epistemic or objectifying
relation to the world.

a. The Conventional View: Aristotle’s Contribution to Substitution Model

Metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else; the transference
being either from species to genus, or from genus to species, or from species to species, on the
grounds of analogy. (Poetics 1457b 6-9)

While his philosophical predecessor Plato condemns the use of figurative speech for its role in
rhetorike, “the art of persuasion,” Aristotle recognizes its stylistic merits and provides us with
the first systematic analysis of metaphor and its place in literature and the mimetic arts. His
briefer descriptions of how metaphors are to be used can be found in Rhetoric and Poetics, while

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his extended analysis of how metaphor operates within the context of language as a whole can be
inferred by reading On Interpretation and Metaphysics. Metaphor as description is an elaboration
on the very meaning of the term, deriving from the Greek metaphora, (from metaphero),
meaning “to transfer or carry over.” Thus, the figurative trope is created by the movement of
substitution, the original term now applied in a new sense, one which compares or juxtaposes
seemingly unrelated subjects. For example, in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73:

In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie…

The narrator transfers and applies the dying ember image in a new “foreign” sense: his own
awareness of his waning youth.

The formal structure of substitution operates in the following manner: the first subject or entity
under description in one context is characterized as equivalent in some way to the second entity
derived from another context; it is either implied or stated that the first entity “is” the second
entity in some way. The metaphorical attribution occurs when certain select properties from the
second entity are imposed on the first in order to characterize it in some distinctive way.
Metaphor relies on pre-existing categories which classify objects and their properties; these
categories guide the ascription of predicates to objects, and since metaphor may entail a kind of
violation of this order, it cannot itself refer to a “real” class of existing objects or the relations
between them. Similarly, in poetry, metaphor serves not as a foundation for knowledge, but as a
tool for mimesis or artistic imitation, representing the actions in epic tragedy or mythos in order
to move and instruct the emotions of the audience for the purpose of catharsis.

For Aristotle, metaphor functions as a linguistic device, widely applied but remaining within the
confines of rhetoric and poetry. Though it does play a central role in social persuasion, it is
restricted by the mechanics of similarity and substitution, and cannot carry any speculative
meaning. Metaphors may point out underlying similarities between objects and their descriptive
categories, and may instruct through adding liveliness and elegance to speech, but they do not
refer, in the strong sense, to a form of propositional knowledge.

This theory can only be fully understood in terms of the wider context of denotation and
reference which supports the classical realist epistemology. Metaphor is found within the
taxonomy of speech forms. Additionally, simile (subordinate to metaphor) and metaphor are
figures of speech falling under the rubric of lexis/diction, which itself is composed of individual
linguistic units or noun-names and verbs. Lexis operates within the unity of logos, meaning that
the uses of various forms of speech must conform to the overall unity of language and reason,
held together by categorical structures of being found in Aristotle’s metaphysics.

Taken together, Aristotle’s various works put forth a denotative theory of language; the ostensive
function of naming individual objects (“this” name standing for “this object” or property) allows
for the clear demarcation between the literal and figurative meanings for names. However, the
noun-name can work as a signifier of meaning in two domains, the literal and the non-literal.
There remains, then, an unresolved problem: how does metaphor succeed in overcoming the
categorical nature of the boundary between literal and figurative domains? This will be a point of

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contention for many contemporary critiques of the standard theory, the most powerful coming
from the voices of phenomenological philosophers.

Furthermore, the denotative theory serves as structural support for the referential function of
language, one which assumes a system of methodological connections between language, sense
perceptions, mental states, and the external world. The referential relation between language and
its objects in turn supports the correspondence theory of truth, in that the truth-bearing capacity
of language corresponds to valid perception and cognition of the external world. We assume
these sets of correspondences allow for the consistent and reliable relation of reference between
words, images, and objects.

Aristotle accounts for this kind of correspondence in the following way: sense perceptions’s
pathemata give rise to the psychological states in which object representations are formed. These
states are actually likenesses (isomorphisms) of the external objects. Thus, names for things refer
to the things themselves, mental representations of those things, and to the class-based meanings.

If, as Aristotle assumes, the meaning of metaphor rests on the level of the noun-name, its
distinguishing feature lies in its deviation, a “something which happens” to the noun/name by
virtue of a transfer (epiphora) of meaning. Here, he creates a metaphor (based on physical
movement) in order to explain metaphor. The term “phora” refers to a change in location from
one place to another, to which is added the prefix “epi:” epiphora refers then to the transfer of the
common proper name of the thing to the new, unfamiliar, alien (allotrios) place or object.
Furthermore, the transference (or substitution), borrowing as it does the alien name for the thing,
does not disrupt the overall unity of meaning or logical order of correspondence within the
denotative system. All such movement remains within the classifications of genus and species.

The metaphoric transfer of meaning becomes a significant point of debate and speculation in
later philosophical discussions. Although Aristotle himself does not explore the philosophical
issues which remain latent within his own theory, subsequent philosophers of language have
recast these issues; namely, the challenges to meaning, reference, and correspondence that
present themselves in the substitution theory. What happens, on these various levels, when we
substitute one object or descriptor of a “natural kind,” to a foreign object domain? It may the be
the case that metaphorical transference calls into question the limits of all meaning-bearing
categories, and in turn, the manner in which words can be said to “refer” to specific objects and
their attributes. By virtue of the epiphoric movement, species and genus attributes of disparate
objects fall into relations of kinship, opposition, or deviation among the various ontological
categories. These relations allow for the metaphoric novelty which will fuel the future
development of alternative theories, recasting metaphor as fundamental to our cognitive or
conceptual processes. It is with this point that the analysis of metaphor opens up a space for
further debate.

b. The Philosophical Issues

In any theory of metaphor, there are significant philosophical implications for the transfer of
meaning from one object-domain or context of associations to another. The metaphor, unlike its
sister-trope the analogy, creates a new form of predication, suggesting that one category or class

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of objects (with certain characteristics) can be projected onto another separate class of entities.
Such projection requires a “blurring” of the ontological and epistemological distinctions between
the kinds of objects that can be said to exist, either in the mind or in the external world. For
example, if we return to the Shakespearean metaphor above, we would ask: what are the criteria
that we use to determine whether a dying ember aptly fits the state of the narrator’s
consciousness? What are the perceptual and ontological connections between fire and human
existence? In other words, how are we to explain and/or defend our claim that new “fit” between
predicate category and objects “makes sense?” If we are to move beyond the standard
substitution model, we are compelled to investigate the specific mental operations involved in
the creation of metaphoric representations; we need to elaborate upon the processes which
connect particular external objects (and their properties) given to sensory experience to linguistic
signs “referring” to a new kind of object, knowledge context, or domain of experience.

According to the standard model, a metaphor’s ability to signify is restricted by ordinary

denotation. The metaphor, understood as a new name, is conceived as a function of individual
terms, rather than sentences or wider forms of discourse (narratives, texts). As Continental
phenomenology develops in the late 19th and 20th centuries, it offers alternative theories which
obscure strict boundaries between the literal and the figurative, disrupting the connections
between perception, language, and thought. The phenomenological, interactionist, and cognitive
treatments of metaphor will argue that metaphorical language and symbol serve as indirect routes
to novel ways of knowing and describing human experience. Each of these theories, in its own
way, will call into question the validity and usefulness of correspondence and reference,
especially in theoretical disciplines such as philosophy, theology, literature, and science.

This particular article describes phenomenological theories of metaphor; however, it should be

noted that in all three theories mentioned above, metaphor is displaced from its formerly
secondary position in substitution theory to occupying the front and center of our cognitive
capabilities. Understood as the product of intentional structures in the mind, metaphor now
becomes conceptual, rather than merely ornamental, acting as a conduit through which we take
apart and re-assemble the concepts we use to describe the varieties and nuances of experience.
All three theories share in the assumption that metaphors suggest, posit, or disclose similarities
between objects and domains of experience (where there seem to be none), without explicitly
recognizing that a comparison is being made between two sometimes very different kinds of
things or events. In applying this insight to our original metaphor (“in me thou seest…”) we are
contending that at times there need not be any explicit similarity between states of awareness in
the narrator and “fire” or “ashes”.

c. Nietzsche’s Role in Development of Phenomenological Theories of Metaphor

In the history of Continental thought, Nietzsche’s represents the first most dramatic turning away
from the substitution theory. With the assertion that all language and concepts are fundamentally
metaphorical, he begins the dismantling of correspondence, denotation, and ordinary reference.
His description of metaphor takes us back to its primordial precognitive ontological origins;
Though his remarks on metaphor are somewhat scattered, they can be found in the early writings
of 1872-74, Nachgelassene Fragmente, and “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense” (see W.
Kaufman’s translation in The Portable Nietzsche). Together with the “Rhetorik” lectures, these

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writings argue for a genealogical explanation of the conceptual, displacing traditional
philosophical categories into the metaphorical realm. In doing so, he deconstructs our
conventional reliance on the idea that meaningful language must reflect a system of logical
correspondences.

With correspondence, we can only assume we are in possession of the truth when our
representations or ideas about the world “match up” with external states of affairs. We have
already seen how Aristotle’s system of first-order predication supports correspondence, as it is
enabled through the denotative ascription of predicates/categorical features of /to objects. But
Nietzsche boldly suggests that we are, from the outset, already in metaphor and he works from
this starting point. The concepts and judgments we use to describe reality do not flatly reflect
pre-existing similarities or causal relationships between themselves and our physical intuitions
about reality, they are themselves metaphorical constructions; that is, concepts are creative forms
of distinction within experience, emerging from a deeper undifferentiated primordiality of being.
The truth of the world is more closely reflected in the Dionysian level of pure aesthetic
immersion into an “undecipherable” innermost essence of things.

Even in his early work, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche rejects the long-held assumption that
truth is an ordering of concepts expressed through rigid linguistic categories, putting forth the
alternative view which gives primacy to symbol as the purest, most elemental form of
representation. That which is and must be expressed is produced organically, out of the flux of
nature and yielding a “becoming” rather than being. He states:

In the Dionysian dithyramb man is incited to the greatest exaltation of all his symbolic
faculties; something never before experienced struggles for utterance—the annihilation of
the veil of maya, … oneness as the soul of the race and of nature itself. The essence of
nature is now to be expressed symbolically; we need a new world of symbols.… (BOT
Ch. 2)

Following Schopenhauer, Nietzsche reverses the Aristotelian order of literal (with its concept-
categories) to figurative, which is the “original mode” for representation of experience.
Nietzsche argues that the terms “species” and “genus,” so important in classical and medieval
epistemology, are misleading illusions which appear to originate and validate themselves in
“dialectics and through scientific reflection.” The categories hide their real nature, abiding as
frozen metaphors which reflect previously experienced encounters with nature, now
metaphorically represented in our consciousness. They come to be through construction
indirectly based in vague images or names for things; that is, they are willed into being out of the
unnamed flux of biological existence. Even Thales the pre-Socratic, in his attempt to give
identity to the underlying unity of all things, falls back on a conceptualization of it as water
without realizing he is using a metaphor.

Once we construct and begin to apply our concepts, their metaphorical origins are forgotten or
concealed from ordinary awareness. This process is but another attempt to restore “the also-
forgotten” original unity of being. A layering of metaphors, the archeological ancestors of
concepts, is inherently linked to our immediate experiential capacity to transcend the proper or
the individual levels of experience and linguistic signs. We cannot, argues Nietzsche, construct

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metaphors without breaking out of the confines of singularity. Thus we must reject the
artificiality of designating separate names for separate things. To assume that an individual name
would completely and transparently describe its referent (in perception) is to also assume that
language and external experience mirror one another in perfect reflection. It is rather the case
that language transfers meaning from place to place. The terms metapherein and Übertragung
are equivalently applied here; if external experience is in constant flux, it is not possible to
reduplicate exact and individual meanings. To re-describe things through metaphor is to “leave
out” and “carry-over” meaning, to undergo a kind of dispossession of self, thing, place, and time
overcoming individualism and dualism. Nietzsche’s powerful statement here displaces the
places meaningful expression of the real from philosophy to art and music.

2. The Phenomenological Theory in Continental Philosophy

Versions of Nietzsche’s metaphorization of concepts reappears in some form or another in the
Continental philosophers who owe their phenomenological attitudes to Husserl while rejecting
his transcendental idealization of meaning, which itself demands that we somehow separate the
world of experience from the essential meanings of objects in that world. We consider
Heidegger, Ricoeur, and Derrida as the primary examples. Taken together, these philosophers
call into question the position that truth entails a relationship of correspondence between dual
aspects of reality, one internal to our minds and the other external. For Heidegger, metaphoric
language signals a totality or field of significance where being discloses or reveals itself.
Ricoeur’s work, in turn, builds upon Heidegger’s ontological project, explicating how it is the
case that metaphors drive speculative reflection. In Ricoeur’s hermeneutic theory, the literal level
is subverted, and metaphoric language and/or symbols containing “semantic kernels” create
structures of double reference in all figurative forms of discourse. Such structures point beyond
themselves in symbols and texts, serving as mediums which reveal new worlds of meaning and
existential possibilities. French philosopher Jacques Derrida, on the other hand, reiterates the
Nietzschean position; metaphor does not subvert metaphysics, but rather is itself the hidden
source of all conceptual structures.

a. Phenomenological Method: Husserl

Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological method laid the groundwork for what would eventually
take shape in the work of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Husserl, broadly speaking, seeks to resolve not only what some see as a problematic dualism in
Kant, but also a few unresolved issues that accompany Hegel’s constructivist phenomenology.

Taken in its entirety, Husserl’s project demonstrates a major shift in the 20th century
phenomenology, seeking a rigorous method for the description and analysis of consciousness and
the contents given to it. He intends his method to be the scientific grounding for philosophy; it is
to be a critique of psychologism and a return to a universal knowledge of “the things
themselves,” those intelligible objects apprehended by and given to consciousness.

In applying this method we seek, Husserl argues, a scientific foundation for universally objective
knowledge; adhering to the “pure description” of phenomena given to consciousness through the
perception of objects. If those objects are knowable, it is because they are immediate in

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conscious experience. It is in the thorough description of these objects as they appear to us in
terms of color, shape, and so forth, that we apprehend that which is essential and meaningful in
the apprehension of reality. Here, the act of description is a method for avoiding a metaphysical
trap: that of imposing these essences or object meanings onto the contents of mental experience.
Noesis, for Husserl, achieves its aim by within itself giving an account, within itself so to speak,
of the role that context plays in delineating possible objects for experience. This will have
important implications for future phenomenological-ontological theories of metaphor, in that
metaphors will intend and create new figurative contexts in which being appears to us.

In Ideen (30), Husserl explains how such a horizon or domain of experience presents a set of
criteria for us to apply in the act of knowing. We choose and identify an object as a single
member of a class of objects, and so these regions of subjective experience, also called regions of
phenomena, circumscribe certain totalities or generic unities to which concrete items belong. It is
first necessary to clarify what we mean by “phenomenological description,” as given in Logical
Investigations. Drawing upon the work of Brentano and Meinong, Husserl develops a set of
necessary structural relations between the knower (ego), the objects of experience, and the
horizon within which those objects are given. The relation is axiomatic in that intentionality,
correlates subjective consciousness and its objects, bringing them together in a psychological
act of knowing. Subjectivity contributes to and makes possible cognition, for it must be the case
that perception and cognition are always about something given in the stream of consciousness.
Both mental processes are only possible because consciousness intends or refers to these
immanent objects. As we shall presently see, the intentional nature of consciousness applies to
Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of the understanding, bestowing metaphor with a special ability to
expand (to nearly undermining) the structure of reference in a non-literal sense to an existential
state. Both Continental and Anglo-American thinkers agree that metaphor holds the key to
understanding these processes, as it re-organizes our senses of perception, temporality, and
relation of subject to object.

b. Heidegger’s Contribution

Heidegger, building upon the phenomenological thematic, asserts that philosophical analysis
should keep to its original purpose, which is the “unveiling” of Being. In describing the human
encounter with the world, he identifies the modes in which being is existentially given or
relationally present to the understanding. This signals both a nod to and departure from Husserl;
it entails a rethinking of phenomenology, replacing the theoretical apprehension of meaning with
an “uncovering” of being as it is lived out in experiential contexts/horizons.

Heidegger owes to Husserl, his mentor, the phenomenological intent to capture “the things
themselves” (die Sachen selbst), however, the project outlined in Being and Time rejects the
attempt to establish phenomenology as a science of the structures of consciousness and reforms it
in ontological and manifestational terms. Heidegger’s strong attraction to the hermeneutic
tradition in part originates in his encounter with Wilhem Dilthey. Dilthey’s influence on
Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur is evident, in that all recognize the historical life of humans as
apprehended in the study of the text (a form of spirit), particularly those containing metaphors
and narratives conveying a lived, concrete experience of religious life. Phenomenology must
now be tied to the problems of human existence, and must then direct itself immediately towards

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the lived world and allow this “beholding” of the world to guide the work of “its own
uncovering.”

Heidegger argues for a return to the original Greek phainomenon (from phainesthai, or “that
which shows itself”) and logos. Heidegger adopts these terms for his own purposes, utilizing
them to reinforce the dependence of ontological disclosure or presence: those beings showing
themselves or letting themselves be “seen-as.” The pursuit of aletheia, or truth as recovering of
the forgotten aspects of being, is now fulfilled through a method of interpretation achieved from
the standpoint of Dasein’s (humanity’s) subjectivity, which in Heidegger has come to replace the
transcendental ego of Kant and Husserl. The turn to language, in this case, must be more than
simple communication between persons; it is a primordial feature of subjectivity. Language is to
be the interpretive medium of the understanding through which all forms of being present
themselves to consciousness. In this way, Heidegger replaces the transcendental version of
phenomenology with the disclosive, where the structure of interpretation leads him to an
ontological view of the understanding.

3. Existential Phenomenology: Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics,

and Metaphor
The linguistic turn in phenomenology has been most directly applied to metaphor in the works of
Paul Ricoeur, who revisits Husserlian and Heideggerian themes in his extensive treatment of
metaphor. He extends his analysis of metaphor into a fully developed discursive theory of
symbols, focusing on those found in religious texts and sacred narratives. He departs from the
overly limited structuralist theories of symbol, since they cannot support a theory linguistic
reference useful for his own hermeneutic project. For Ricoeur, a proper theory of metaphor
understands it to be “a re-appropriation of our effort to exist,” echoing Nietszche’s call to the
primordiality of being.

The body of Ricoeur’s work can be characterized by his well-known statement “the symbol gives
rise to the thought.” Ricoeur shares Heidegger’s and Husserl’s assumptions; we reflectively
apprehend or grasp the structures of human experience as they are presented to temporalized
subjective consciousness as it find itself already “in-the-world.” While the “pure”
phenomenology of Husserl seeks a transparent description of experience as it is lived out in
phases or moments, Ricoeur, following Nietzsche, centers the creation of meaning in the pre-
reflective, relational realm of experience. We understand the noetic act in the encounter with a
living text, constituting “a horizon of possibilities,” for the meaning of being, thus abandoning
the search for essences internal to the objects of experience.

The foundational work The Symbolism of Evil, eventually followed by The Rule of Metaphor,
places the route to human understanding concretely, via symbolic expressions which allow for
the phenomenological constitution, reflection, and re-appropriation of experience. These
processes are enabled by the structure of “seeing-as,” adding to Heidegger’s insight with the
metaphoric acting as a “refiguring” of that which is given to consciousness. At various points in
ROM he enters into theoretical exchange with Max Black and Nelson Goodman, acknowledging
the cognitive contributions to science and art found in their theories of models and metaphors. In

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Ricoeur’s case, sacred metaphors display the same second-order functions shared by those in the
arts and sciences, but with a distinctively ontological emphasis. He states “the interpretation of
symbols is worthy of being called a hermeneutics only insofar as it is a part of self-understanding
and of the understanding of being” (COI 30).

The Rule of Metaphor outlines a departure from Aristotle, relocating the signifying power of
metaphor to the level of the sentence and wider forms of discourse. Metaphor is to be understood
as a linguistic-discursive act which achieves its purpose through extended predication, rather
than the substitution of names. Ricoeur, reminiscent of so many language philosophers, sees
substitution as incomplete; it does not go far enough in accounting for the semantic, syntactic,
logical, and ontological issues that accompany the creation of a metaphor. In effect, the standard
substitution model cannot do justice to metaphor’s ability to work in tandem with propositional
thought-structures. To these ends, the series of studies in The Rule of Metaphor depart from
denotative theories, building a phenomenological model as it works through a structure of
double reference. He reads the metaphorical transfer of a name as a kind of “category mistake”
which produces a wide field of reference; that is, the imaginative construction of new way
objects may be related to one another. He expands the dynamic of meaning transfer to the level
of the sentence, then text, enabling the production of second-order thought, where all forms of
symbolic language become phenomenological disclosures of being.

Ricoeur begins with an examination of epiphora (the transfer of names-predicates) found in

Aristotle’s Poetics. A central dynamic exists in transposing one term, with one set of meaning-
associations onto another. Citing the example of “sowing around a god-created flame….”

If A = light of the sun, B = action of the sun, C = grain, and D = sowing, then

B is to A, as D is to C

We see action of the sun is to light as sowing is to grain, however, B is a vague action term
(sun’s action) which is both missing and implied; Ricoeur identifies this “nameless act” as an
establishing of similar relation to the object, sunlight, as sowing is to the grain. Here the space
for the creation of new meaning is opened up, precisely because we cannot find a conventional
word to take the place of a metaphorical word. The nameless act implies that the transfer of an
alien name entails more than a simple substitution of concepts; it is therefore said to be logically
disruptive.

a. The Mechanics of Conceptual Blending

The nameless act, according to Ricoeur, entails a kind of “cognitive leap:’’ since there is no
conventional term for B, the act does not involve placing a decorative term in its place. Rather, a
new meaning association has been created through the semantic gap between the objects. The
absence of the original literal term, the “semantic void”, cannot be filled without the creation of a
metaphor which signals the larger discursive context of the sentence and eventually, the text. If,
as above, the transfer of predicates (the sowing of grain as casting of flames) challenges the
“rules” of meaning dictated by ostensive theory, the hermeneutic understanding intends that we
make a new connection where there was none-- between the conventional and metaphorical

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names for the object. For Ricoeur, the figurative (sowing around a flame) acts as a medium in
that it negates and displaces the original term, signifying a “new kind of object” which is in fact
a new form (logos) of being. The metaphorical statement allows us to say that an object is and is
not what we usually call it. There is a then a way to separate the sense-based aspects of object-
experience from predication and subsequently, logos is emptied of its objective meaning; the
new object may be meaningful but not clear under the conditions of strict denotation or natural
knowledge.

For Ricoeur, the “new object” has more than figurative existence, for the newly formed subject-
predicate relation places the copula at the center of the name-object (ROM 18). Ricoeur’s
objective is the creation of a dialectically driven process which produces a new ‘object-domain’
or category of being. Following the movement of the Hegelian Aufhebung, (through the
aforementioned negation and displacement) the new name has opened up a new field of meaning
to be re-appropriated into our reflective consciousness. This is how Ricoeur deconstructs first-
order reference in order to develop an ontology of sacred language based on second-order
reference. We are led to the view that myths are modes of discourse whose meanings are
phenomenological spaces of openness, creating a nearly infinite range of interpretations. Thus
we see how metaphor enables being, as Aristotle notes, to “be said in many ways.”

Ricoeur argues that second-order discursivity “violates” the pre-existing first order of genus and
species, in turn causing a kind of upheaval among further relations and rules set by the
categories: namely subordination, coordination, proportionality or equality among object
properties. Something of a unity of being remains, yet for Ricoeur this non-generic unity or
enchainement corresponds to a single generic context referring to “Being,” restricting the senses
or applications of transferred predicates in the metaphoric context.

b. The Role of Kant’s Schematism in Conceptual Blending

The notion of a “non-generic unity” raises, perhaps, more philosophical problems than it
answers. How are we to explain the mechanics which blend descriptors from one object domain
and its sets of perceptions, to a domain of foreign objects? Ricoeur addresses the epistemic issues
surrounding the transfer of names from one category of spatiotemporal experience to another by
importing Kant’s theory of object construction in the Critique of Pure Reason. In the
“Transcendental Schematism,” Kant establishes the objective validity of the conceptual
categories we use to synthesize the contents of experience. Here Kant elevates the Aristotelian
categories from grammatical principles to formal structures intrinsic to reason. In doing so he
sheds light on an essential problem for knowledge: how are we to conceive a relationship
between these pure concept-categories of the understanding and the sensible objects given to us
in space and time? With the schematism, we see an attempt to resolve the various issues inherent
to the construction of mental representations (a position shared by contemporary cognitive
scientists; see below). For Ricoeur, the schematism serves to answer the problem of how
metaphoric representations of reality can actually “refer” to reality (even if only at the existential
level of experience).

Kant states “the Schematism” is a “sensible condition under which alone pure concepts of the
understanding can be employed” (CPR/A 136). Though the doctrine is sometimes said to be

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notoriously confusing due to its circular nature, the schemata are meant as a distinctive set of
mediating representations, rules, or operators in the mind which themselves display the universal
and necessary characteristics of sensible objects; these characteristics are in turn synthesized and
unified by the activity of the transcendental imagination. In plainer terms, the schematic function
is used by the imagination to guide it in the construction of images. It does not seem to be any
kind of picture of an object, but rather the “form” or “listing” of how we produce the picture.

For Ricoeur, the schematism lends the structural support for assigning an actual truth-value or
cognitive contribution to the semantic innovation produced by metaphor. The construction of
new meaning or form of predication entails a re-organization and re-interpretation of pre-existing
form. In the work Figuring the Sacred, for example, Ricoeur, answering to his contemporary
Mircea Eliade ( The Sacred and The Profane), moves metaphor beyond the natural
“boundedness” of myths and symbols. While these manifest meaning, they are still formally
constrained in that they must mirror the natural cosmic order of things. Metaphor, on the other
hand, occupies the center of a “hermeneutic of proclamation;” it has the power to proclaim
because it is a “free invention of discourse.” Ricoeur cites biblical parables, proverbs, and
eschatological statements as extended metaphorical processes. Thus, “The Kingdom of God will
not come with signs that you can observe. Do not say, ‘It is here; it is there.’ Behold the kingdom
of God is among you” (Luke 17:20-21). This symbolic statement breaks apart our familiar
temporal frameworks, now applied to interpretation of signs of the kingdom at hand. The very
natural quest for familiar signs has been overthrown for the sake of “a completely new existential
signification” (FS 59).

4. Jacques Derrida: Metaphor as Metaphysics

Derrida’s deconstructive philosophy radically undermines our traditional approaches to the
analysis of concepts, viewing them in a novel way through the lens of a rhetorical methodology.
His approach moves beyond phenomenology as it breaks what we assume to be consistent
structures of perception, concept formation, meaning, and reference.

Derrida, from the outset, challenges the assumption that the formation of concepts (logos)
somehow escapes the primordiality of language and the fundamentally metaphorical-mythical
nature of philosophical discourse. In a move which goes much further than Ricoeur, Derrida
argues for what Guiseseppe Stellardi so aptly calls the “reverse metaphorization of concepts.”
The reversal is such that there can be no final separation between the linguistic-metaphorical and
the philosophical-speculative realms. These domains are co-constitutive of one another, in the
sense that either one cannot fully theorized or transparently explain the meaning of the other.
The result is that language acquires a certain obscurity, ascendancy, and autonomy. It will
permanently elude our attempts to fix its meaning-making activity in foundational terms which
necessitate a transcendent or externalized ontological reality.

The White Mythology offers a penetrating critique of the common paradigm involving the nature
of concepts, posing the following questions: “Is there metaphor in the text of philosophy, and if
so, how?” Here, the history of philosophy is characterized as an economy, a kind of “usury”
where meaning and valuation are understood as metaphorical processes involving “gain and
loss.” The process is represented through Derrida’s well-known image of the coin:

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 I was thinking how the Metaphysicians, when they make a language for themselves, are
like … knife-grinders, who instead of knives and scissors, should put medals and coins to
the grindstone to efface … the value… When they have worked away till nothing is
visible in these crown pieces, neither King Edward, the Emperor William, nor the
Republic, they say: ‘These pieces have nothing either English, German, or French about
them; we have freed them from all limits of time and space; they are not worth five
shillings any more ; they are of inestimable value, and their exchange value is extended
indefinitely.’ (WM 210).

The “usury” of the sign (the coin) signifies the passage from the physical to the metaphysical.
Abstractions now become “worn out” metaphors; seeming as defaced coins, their original, finite
values replaced by a vague expression of the meaning-images that may have been present in the
originals.

Such is the movement which simultaneously creates and masks the construction of concepts.
Concepts, whose real origins have been forgotten, yield only an empty sort of philosophical
promise – that of “the absolute”, the universalized, unlimited “surplus value” achieved by the
eradication of the sensory given. Derrida reads this process along a negative Hegelian line: the
metaphysicians are most attracted to “concepts in the negative, ab-solute, in-finite, non-Being”
(WM 121). Their love of the most abstract concept, made that way “by long and universal use”,
reveals a preference for the construction of a metaphysics of Being made possible via the
movement of the Aufhebung. In Hegel, the term refers to a dynamic of sublation where the
dialectical, progressive movement of consciousness which subsumes the particular, concrete
singularities of experience in successive moments of cognition. Derrida levels a strong criticism
against Hegel’s attempts to overcome difference, arguing that consciousness as understood by
Hegel takes on the quality of building an oppressive sort of narrative, subsuming the particular
and the momentary under an artificial theoretical gaze. Derrida instead gives theoretical privilege
to the systematic negation of all finite determinations of meaning derived from individual aspects
of particular beings.

Much like Heidegger, Derrida conceives of metaphysical constructs as indicative of the Western
“logocentric epoch” in philosophy. Logocentricity has long depended on the machinery of binary
logic, remaining static in its adherence to the meaning of ousia (essence). Ousia has classically
restricted the meaning of being to self-identitical substance, which can only be predicated or
expressed in either/or terms. Reference to being, in this case, is constrained within the field of
the proper and univocal. Heidegger Derrida, Ricoeur seek, in their own distinctive ways, to free
reference from these constraints. Derrida, unlike Heidegger however, does not work from the
assumption that being indicates some unified primordial reality.

For Derrida, there lies hidden within the merely apparent logical unity (with its attendant binary
oppositions) or logocentricity of consciousness a white mythology, masking the primitive
plurivocity of being which eludes all attempts to name it. Here we find traces of lost meanings,
reminiscent of the lost inscriptions on coins. These are “philosophemes,” words, tropes or modes
of figuration which do not express ideas or abstract representations of things (grounded in
categories), but rather invoke a radically plurivocal notion of meaning. Having thus dismantled
the logic of either/or with difference (difference), Derrida gives priority to ambiguity, in

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“both/and” and “neither/nor” modes of thought and expression. Meaning must then be
constituted of and by difference, rather than identity, for difference subverts all preconceived
structures. It is articulated in the context of all linguistic relations and involves ongoing
displacement of a final idealized and unified form of meaning; such displacement reveals
through hints and traces, the reality and experience of a disruptive alterity in meaning and being.
Alterity is “always already there” by virtue of the presence of the Other.

In his essay“the White Mythology,” Derrida’s alignment with Nietszche creates a strong
opposition to traditional Western theoria. Forms of abstract ideation preserved in the name of
logs represent the oppressive consciousness of the white man. They are in themselves a
collection of analogies, existing as colorless dead metaphors whose primitive origins lie in the
realm of myth, symbol, and fable.

b. the Dispute between Ricoeur and Derrida

Derrida’s project, intending the deconstruction of metaphysics, runs counter to Ricoeur’s tensive
theory of language and metaphor. In contrast to Heidegger’s restrained criticism Derrida’s
deconstruction appears to Ricoeur “unbounded.” Ricoeur still assumes a distinction between the
speculative and the poetic, where the poetic “drives the speculative” to explicate a surplus of
meaning. The surplus, or plurivocity is problematic from Derrida’s standpoint. The latter argues
that the theory remains logocentric in that it remains true to the binary mode of identity and
difference which produce distinctions such as “being and non-being.” For Ricoeur, metaphors
create a new space for meaning based on the tension between that which is (can be properly
predicated of an object) and that which “is not” (which cannot be predicated of an object).
Derrida disagrees. In the final analysis, there can be no such separation, systematic philosophical
theory or set of conceptual structures through which we subsume and “explain” the cognitive or
existential value of metaphor.

Derrida’s reverse metaphorization of concepts does not support a plurivocal characterization of

meaning and therefore cannot create the path to a wider referential field; for Derrida metaphors
and concepts remain in a complex, always ambiguous relation to one another. The doing away
with reference, or the distinction between signifier and signified, takes us beyond polysemy. The
point here is to preserve the flux of sense and the ongoing dissemination of meaning through
otherness.

5. Anglo-American Philosophy: Interactionist Theories

Contemporary phenomenological theories of metaphor directly challenge the straightforward
theory of reference, replacing the ordinary propositional truth based on denotation with a theory
of language which designates and discloses its referents. These interactionist theories carry
certain Neo-Kantian features, particularly in the work of the analytic philosophers Nelson
Goodman and Max Black. They posit the view that metaphors can reorganize the connections we
make between our perceptions of the world. Their theories reflect certain phenomenological
assumptions about the ways in which figurative language expands the referential field, allowing
for the creation of novel meanings and creating new possibilities for constructing models of

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reality; in moving between the realms of art and science, metaphors have an interdisciplinary
utility. Both Goodman and Black continue to challenge the traditional theory of linguistic
reference, offering instead the argument that reference is enabled by the manipulation of
predicates in figurative modes of thinking through language.

6. Metaphor, Phenomenology, and Cognitive Science

Recent studies underscore the connections between metaphors, mapping, and schematizing
aspects of cognitive organization in mental life. Husserl’s approach to cognition took an anti-
naturalist stance, opposed to defining consciousness as an objective entity and therefore unsuited
to studying the workings of subjective consciousness. In naturalized phenomenology and
cognitive science, the trend is renewed and productive inroads made in connectionist and
embodied approaches to perception, cognition and other sorts of dynamic and adaptive biological
systems.

Zahavi and Thompson, for example, see strong links between Husserlian phenomenology and
philosophy of mind with respect to the phenomena of consciousness. They clarify the
constitutive nature of consciousness specifically in terms of forms and relations in different kinds
of intentional mental states. These thinkers locate the unity of temporal experience, the structural
relations between intentional mental acts and their objects, in embodied cognition. Those who
study the embodied mind do not accept all traditional (Continental) phenomenological
assumptions and methods. Nevertheless, some naturalized versions in the field of consciousness
studies are now gaining ground, offering viable solutions to Cartesian dualistic metaphysics that
Husserl’s phenomenology sought to replace.

a. The Embodied Mind

In recent years, the expanding field of cognitive science has explored the role of metaphor in
cognition and perception. In a general sense, it appears that contemporary cognitivist,
constructivist, and systems (as in self-organizing) approaches to the study of mind incorporate
metaphor into an anti-metaphysical, anti-positivist theory of mind. While rejecting Cartesian
dualism and Kantian transcendentalism, cognitive theories, however, recognize the importance
of schematism in the construction of cognitive systems.

There is in these theories an overturning of any remaining structuralist suppositions (that

language and meaning might be based on autonomous configurations of syntactic elements).
Many cognitive scientists, in disagreement with Chomsky’s generative grammar, study meaning
as a form of cognition that is activated in context of use. Lakoff and Johnson, in Philosophy in
the Flesh, find extensive empirical evidence for how metaphors shape ordinary experience. Their
work explores the largely unconscious perceptual and linguistic processes underlying our ability
understand one idea or domain of experience, conceptual or physical, in a foreign domain. The
research follows the work of Srini Narayanan and Eleanor Rosch in identifying schemas and
metaphors as key to embodied theories of cognition—where our neuronal makeup, or physical

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interactions with the environment, and our own private and social human purposes function in
connective interplay with one another.

In a limited sense, the embodied nature of cognition aligns itself with the phenomenological
position. We can understand how perceptual systems, built in physical response to determinate
spatio-temporal and linguistic contexts, become phenomenological domains of experience
shaped through language use. Yet these researchers take issue with Continental views in a
dramatic and far-reaching way; they object to the claim that phenomenological method of
conscious introspection makes adequate space for surveying all available fields of
consciousness. If it is the case that we do not fully access the far reaches of hidden cognitive
processes, then much of the metaphorical mapping which supports cognition takes place at an
unconscious level “the cognitive unconscious.”(PIF 12-15)

Other philosophers of mind, including Stefano Arduini, and Antonio D’Amasio, work along
similar lines in cognitive linguistics and cognitive science. Their work investigates the ways in
which metaphors ground various first and second-order cognitive and emotional mental
functions. There is potential for overlap the phenomenological with the cognitive-conceptual
version of metaphor, embody emergent transformative forms of meaning.

Arduini, in his work, explores the “anthropological ability” to build up representations of the
world. Here, rhetorical figures are realized on the basis of conceptual domains which create the
borders of experience. We have access to a kind of reality that would otherwise be indeterminate,
for human beings have the ability to conceptualize the world in imaginative terms through myth,
symbol, the unconscious, or any expressive sign. Figurative activity does not depict the given
world, but allows for the ability to construct world images employed in reality. To be
figuratively competent is to use the imagination as a tool which puts patterns together in
inventive mental processes. Humans are always engaging in some form of figuration, allowing
for “cognitive competence” in choosing among particular forms which serve to define the
surrounding environments.

b. The Literary Mind

The work of Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner extends that of Lakoff and Johnson outlined
above. For Fauconnier, the task of language is to construct; for the linguist and cognitive
scientist it is “a window into the mind.” Independently and together, Fauconnier and Turner’s
collaboration results in a theory of conceptual blending in which metaphorical forms take center
stage. Basically, the theory of conceptual blending follows from Lakoff and Johnson’s work on
the “mapping” or projective qualities of our cognitive faculties. For example, if we return to take
Shakespearean line “in me thou seest the glowing of such fire”, the source is fire, whose sets of
associations are projected onto the target – in this case the waning aspect of the narrator. Their
research shows that large numbers of such cross-domain mappings are, in effect, conceptual
structures which have propositional content: for example, “life is fire, loss is extinction of fire.”
There exist several categories of mappings across different conceptual domains, including spatio-
temporal orientation, movement, and containment. For example: “time flies” or “this relationship
is smothering.”

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Turner’s work in The Literary Mind, takes a slightly different route, identifying cognitive
mechanisms as forms of “storytelling.” This may, superficially, seem counterintuitive to the
ordinary observer, but Turner gives ample evidence for the mind’s ability to do much of its
everyday work using various forms of narrative projection (LM 6-9). It is not too far a reach
from this version of narrative connection back to the hermeneutic and cognitive-conceptual uses
of metaphor outlined earlier. If, for example, we understand parables to be essentially forms of
extended metaphor, we can clearly see the various ways in which they contribute to the making
of intelligible experience.

The study of these mental models sheds light on the phenomenological and hermeneutic aspects
of reality-construction. If these heuristic models are necessary to cognitive functioning, it is
because they allow us to represent higher-order aspects of reality which involve expressions of
human agency, intentionality, and motivation. Though we may be largely unaware of these
patterns, they are based on our ability to think in metaphor, are necessary, and are continuously
working to enable the structuring of intentional experience – which cannot always be adequately
represented by straightforward first-order physical description. Fauconnier states:

We see their status as inventions by contrasting them with alternative representations of

the world. When we watch someone sitting down in a chair, we see what physics cannot
recognize: an animate agent performing an intentional act. (MTL 19-20)

Fauconnier’s work, correlating here with Turner’s, moves between cognitive-scientific and
phenomenological considerations; the mapping of reality is really a constrained form of
projection, moving across mental structures which correspond to various domains of thought,
action, and communication. This conflation of domains, not unlike Max Black’s interactionist
dynamics, amounts to a form of induction resulting from projected relations between a source
structure, a pattern we already understand, onto a target structure, that which we seek to
understand.

Mapping as a form of metaphoric construction leads to other forms of blending, conceptual

integration, and novel category formation. We can, along with Fauconnier and the rest, describe
this emergent evolution of linguistic meaning in dialectical terms, arguing that it is possible to
mesh together two images of virus (biological and computational) into a third integrated idea that
integrates and expands the meaning of the first two (MTL 22). Philosophically speaking, we
seem to have come full circle back to the Hegelian theme which runs through the
phenomenological analysis of metaphor as a refiguring of mind interacting with the external
world.

7. Conclusion
The Continental theories of metaphor may be variations on the theme expressed in Nietzsche’s
apocryphal pronouncement that truth is “a mobile army of metaphors.” The notion that
metaphorical language is somehow ontologically and epistemologically prior to ordinary
propositional language has since been voiced by Heidegger, Ricoeur, and Derrida. For these
thinkers metaphor serves as a foundational heuristic structure, one which is primarily designed to
subvert ordinary reference and in some way dismantle the truth-bearing claims of first-order

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propositional language. Martin Heidegger’s existential phenomenology does away with the
assumption that true or meaningful intentional statements reflect epistemic judgments about the
world; that is, they do not derive referential efficacy through the assumed correspondence
between an internal idea and an external object. While there may be a kind of agreement between
our notions of things and the world in which we find those things, it is still a derivative
agreement emerging from a deeper ontologically determined set of relations between things-in-
the-world, given to us in particular historical, linguistic, or cultural contexts.

The role of metaphor in perception and cognition also dominates the work of contemporary
cognitive scientists, linguists, and those working in the related fields. Their work points to an
“anti-metaphysical” position and draws upon the embodied, linguistic, contextual, and symbolic
nature of knowledge. Thinkers in this camp argue that metaphoric schemas are integral to
successful human reasoning and action.

8. References and Further Reading

 Aristotle. Categories and De Interpretatione. J.C. Ackrill, trans. Oxford, Clarendon,
1963. (CDI)
 Aristotle. Peri Hermenenias. Hans Arens, trans. Philadelphia, Benjamins, 1984. (PH)
 Arduini, Stefano (ed.). Metaphors. Edizioni Di Storia E Letteratura,
 Barber, A. and Stainton, R. The Concise Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics.
 Oxford, Elsevier Ltd., 2010
 Black, Max. Models and Metaphors. Ithaca, Cornell, 1962. (MAM)
 Brentano, Franz C. On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle. Berkeley, UC Press,
1975.
 Cazeaux, Clive. Metaphor and Continental Philosophy, from Kant to Derrida. London,
Routledge, 2007.
 Cooper, David E. Metaphor. London, Oxford, 1986.
 Derrida, Jacques. “White Mythology, Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy” in Margins of
Philosophy, trans. A. Bass, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1982. (WM)
 Fauconnier, Gilles. Mappings in Thought and Language. Cambridge, Cambridge
University, 1997. (MTL)
 Gallagher, Shaun. Phenomenology and Non-reductionist Cognitive Science” in
Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. ed. by Shaun Gallagher and Daniel
Schmicking. Springer, New York, 2010.
 Goodman, Nelson. Languages of Art. New York, Bobs-Merrill, 1968.
 Hinman, Lawrence. “Nietzsche, Metaphor, and Truth” in Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, Vol. 43, #2, 1984.
 Harnad, Stevan. “Category Induction and Representation” in Categorical Perception:
The Groundwork of Cognition. New York, Cambridge, 1987.
 Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. John MacQuarrie and E. Robinson, trans. New York,
 Harper and Row, 1962. (BT)
 Heidegger, Martin. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. A. Hofstadter,
Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1982.
 Huemer, Wolfgang. The Constitution of Consciousness: A Study in Analytic
Phenomenology. Routledge, 2005.

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  Johnson, Mark. “Metaphor and Cognition” in Handbook of Phenomenology and
Cognitive Science, ed. by Shaun Gallagher and Daniel Schmicking. Springer, New York,
2010.
 Joy, Morny. “Derrida and Ricoeur: A Case of Mistaken Identity” in The Journal of
Religion. Vol. 68, #04, University of Chicago Press, 1988.
 Kant, Immanuel. The Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. N. K. Smith, New York, 1958.
(CPR)
 Kofman, Sarah, Nietzsche and Metaphor. Trans. D. Large, Stanford, 1993.
 Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its
Challenge to Western Thought. New York, Perseus-Basic, 1999.
 Malabou, Catharine. The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and the Dialectic.
Trans. Lisabeth During, New York, Routledge, 2005.
 Nietzsche, F. The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wagner. Trans. W. Kaufman. New
York, Vintage, 1967. (BOT)
 Lawlor, Leonard. Imagination and Chance: The Difference Between the Thought of
Ricoeur and Derrida. Albany, SUNY Press, 1992
 Mohanty, J.N. and McKenna, W.R. Husserl’s Phenomenology; A Textbook. Washington,
DC, University Press, 1989.
 Rajan, Tilottama. Deconstruction and the Remainders of Phenomenology: Sartre,
Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2002.
 Ricoeur, Paul. Figuring the Sacred, trans. D. Pellauer, Minneapolis, Fortress, 1995. (FS)
 Ricoeur, Paul. The Rule of Metaphor. Toronto, University of Toronto, 1993. (ROM)
 Schrift Alan D. and Lawlor, Leonard (eds.) TheHistory of Continental Philosophy; Vol. 4
Phenomenology: Responses and Developments. Chicago, University of Chicago Press,
2010.
 Stellardi, Giuseppe. Heidegger and Derrida on Philosophy and Metaphor: Imperfect
Thought. New York, Humanity-Prometheus, 2000.
 Tooby, J. and L. Cosmides (ed. with J.Barkow). The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary
Psychology and The Generation of Culture. Oxford, 1992.
 Turner, Mark. The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language. Oxford, 1996.
(LM)
 Woodruff-Smith, David and McIntyre, Ronald. Husserl and Intentionality: A Study of
Mind, Meaning, and Language. Boston, 1982.
 Zahavi, Dan. “Naturalized Phenomenology” in Handbook of Phenomenology and
Cognitive Science.

Author Information

S. Theodorou
Email: stheodorou@immaculata.edu
Immaculata University
U. S. A.

Last updated: September 14, 2013 | Originally published: September 13, 2013

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Categories: Continental Philosophy, Philosophy of Language

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