Modes of Reality Derivation

Paul Ricoeur derives his theory of metaphor from the referential relationship of language to the world, to its reality. In the seventh chapter of his seminal work 'The Rule of Metaphor' (title: 'Metaphor and Reference'), Ricoeur extends Frege's idea of reference in semantic and hermeneutic frameworks from nominal to sentential or synthetic-predicative and finally to textual, i.e., pertaining to discourse. Ricoeur points out, on the one hand, how the semantic and hermeneutic referentiality is opposed to the semiotic confinement of language and, on the other hand, the gradation of this referentiality according to the proximity of the reference to the world, which constitutes an extra-linguistic reality: "Grounded on the predicative act, what is intended by discourse [l'intenté] points to an extra-linguistic reality which is its referent. Whereas the sign points back only to other signs immanent within a system, discourse is about things. Sign differs from sign, discourse refers to the world. Difference is semiotic, reference is semantic." Furthermore, Ricoeur attributes to metaphor - as a linguistic possibility and crisis at the same time - the unique function of freeing the language from its characteristic extra-worldliness caused by its semiotic confinement, which should consequently enable the language to have closer referential access to the world. However, according to Ricoeur, the metaphorical reference arises from the "suspension" of the literal reference; it forms a second-level reference when the literal or first-level reference is suspended. Ricoeur develops the idea of suspended reference based on his original ideas of metaphorical reference as non-ostensive reference, null reference and as refiguration that he introduces and discusses in the work 'Time and Narrative' (Temps et récit, Vol. 3). In my paper I try to show how Ricoeur's idea of suspended reference, which seems to indicate the extra-worldliness of metaphor or metaphor's impossible referential access to the world, actually suggests its worldliness. The referentiality of metaphor in the mode of a referential access to an extra-linguistic world also requires a reversal of the epistemic directionality of concept formation (Begriffsbildung), to which Nietzsche's theory of metaphor, introduced in his early work 'On Truth and Lies in an Extramoral Sense' (Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne), points. Such a reversal of the epistemic directionality should complement Ricoeur's idea of the metaphorical reference, resulting from the suspension of a literal, first-level reference, and thereby decisively secure the worldliness of metaphor.

Metaphors we live by in Brazil: anthropophagic notes on classic and contemporary approaches to metaphor in the Brazilian scientific-academic context Metáforas da Vida Cotidiana no Brasil: notas antropofágicas sobre abordagens clássicas e contemporâneas da metáfora no contexto acadêmico-científico brasileiro

Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, 2019

This paper analyzes the exchange between Ricoeur and Derrida concerning metaphor. I argue that the exchange is not a "missed encounter," as Pirovolakis has suggested, but exemplifies a hermeneutic situation in which theoretical divergence is supplemented by a practical convergence. Rather than a mere exegesis of the exchange between Ricoeur and Derrida, I emphasize the practical implications for the interpretation of poetic metaphors. To be more specific, I emphasize the case of Celan's poem "Blume" and the semantic density of the central metaphor. Although Ricoeur and Derrida diverge in strictly theoretical terms, their theoretical positions-when translated into practical terms-establish different but convergent paradigms for the interpretation of poetic metaphors.

Centred on the French philosopher’s reflection, my paper will consist first of all in presenting the reasons which led him to take interest in this level of language. Then it will be necessary to demonstrate the difference this author made between the model as we conceive it in scientific language and the metaphor as it appears in poetic language. Finally, faced with technical and operating knowledge I will endeavour to highlight the social, political and spiritual significance of metaphorical speech.

Ostium, vol. 19, no.1, 2023

The aim of this paper is to reflect upon the main problem opened by the semantic model of autonomy proposed by Ricoeur: namely, the problem of the reference of the text. Since a text is, above all, a written work, it acquires a threefold autonomy – from the author's intention, from its being addressed to its original readers, and from the situation of the work. Then the issue gains complexity if one considers the field of literature, and particularly, that of fictional literature, which seems to destroy any reference to our given reality. At this point the role of poetry and metaphor becomes paradigmatic: if we consider metaphor (with its productive reference) as a poem in miniature, it can be assumed as the touchstone through which the theory of verbal signification could achieve its utmost enlargement.

Papers on Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology and Pedagogy, 2018

The article discusses the problem of metaphor from the semantical point of view, at the lexical level. Alter havins explained why do metaphors represent a touch stone of any semantical theory, and after having given a brief survey of possible theoretical solutions of the problem, the author exposes her own view of metaphor based on late Wittgenstein's theory of meaning. On the assumption that there should be no artificial break between semantics and pragmatics the author argues that the same semantical, pragmatical an epistemological principles govern the production and interpretation of literal and metaphorical language. The difference between literal and metaphorical is understood as a token, and not a type difference, depending on what is considered to be the common meaning of a word. Metaphor Is defined as a semantic innovation, nomination, realized by the extension of literal meaning. Arguments for her thesis the author finds in the analysis of the processes of language acq...

2015

Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 2024

In this paper, I offer a comparative study of Paul Ricoeur's analyses of metaphor and the role of the khōra in Plato's Timaeus. My goal is twofold. First, I show that both metaphors and the khōra play a role in the structuration of the world and the possibility of its knowability. This role is much more significant than a merely ornamental or residual or subsidiary function. Second, I argue for a reading of Ricoeur and of Plato on which Ricoeur's metaphorical process and the work of the khōra are closely aligned. The result is that I both offer a new view of the khōra and also explain how and why, on my view, the khōra already contains structural elements of the metaphorical process that Ricoeur works out.

The approach I take in this thesis views genre as a rhetorical relation, whereby rhetoric is the end result of a system of relating concepts to one another: it describes recognisable and repeatable patterns that are themselves changeable and which result in the mutable concepts we identify as genres. Genre, as a set of rhetorical practices, becomes a recognisable form through its role in delimiting the text as a certain kind of meaning. Contemporary genre theory acknowledges the mutability of genres, having moved away from the taxonomic approach which strives to classify and identify texts in relation to generic conventions, thus resulting in the reification of genre. This shift between a poetics and a taxonomic approach reveals the productive confusion between these two poles-that genre is something that conveys repeatable form and content (even if these prove difficult, if not impossible, to define) and is itself a rhetorical relation responsible for the text's meaning in terms that go beyond the semiotic system of language. In assigning genre a dual meaning I am identifying two different rhetorical dimensions-that which sees genre as a form, and that which sees it as a relation. These are respectively the semiotic and syntagmatic dimensions. (When genre is given in semantic terms, we are generally speaking of the cited text as an example of the "content" of a given genre.) Importantly, the terms that I employ to delimit these three dimensions are themselves metaphors: what I mean to say is that we construct meaning in terms that are like the effects defined by these terms. Elsewhere I will refer to these dimensions as form, content, and function, or as body, mind, and relation. What I hope to achieve by the shift in my use of terms is to convey the ways in which we delimit meaning as kind, whereby meaning is given a function or results in a reified concept or form, or performs more conventionally as semantic content. I also want to stress that I am talking about metaphoric constructions; I do not intend to delimit ontological or phenomenological criteria beyond metaphoric values. The basic premise underlying my argument is that genre itself describes a conceptual relation much like that between the components of a metaphor. Metaphoric relations entail finding likeness in unlike things. Generic relations are, of course, far more complex when taken as the coherent meaning units represented by texts because these entail diverse groupings of various ways for drawing likeness-ways that involve conceptual and metaphorical contiguity in the first instance (before similarity can be found), as when concepts are brought together and juxtaposed, or objects are imagined as spatially connected. Rhetorical terminology provides sets of contiguous relations that are well established as discursive practices. These relations include conceptual actions like the forms of reduction, extension, and contiguity established as

Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Philologia, LVIII 2/2013, 201-214, 2013

This paper presents the results of a study in the field of speech linguistics, which studies linguistic phenomena starting from the activity of speaking, not from language. From the perspective of the three linguistic levels proposed by Eugenio Coseriu, the creation of metaphors is situated at the universal level. This paper investigates the common ground that integral linguistics and cognitive semantics share. An illustrative case study is proposed in order to highlight the manner in which the two semantic approaches may complement one another to the benefit of research in the field of metaphor.