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Metaphor as Discourse

15/12/2011 By Kelly Cooper

“"Ricoeur begins his discussion of metaphor by returning to Aristotle, who had already discussed metaphor in his Poetics and his book on rhetoric. Aristotle considered rhetoric and poetic discourse — even given their use of metaphor and other figurative forms — to overlap logic because of the appeal to some form of argumentation they both include. This emphasis on argument is important because rhetorical argument introduces the idea of creativity (in the sense of finding a persuasive argument) as well as drawing on the idea of proof. Poetry, too, is creative, but unlike logic 'does not seek to prove anything at all: its project is mimetic; its aim… is to compose an essential representation of human actions'(RM,13).¹ Metaphor, as a form of semantic innovation, plays a role both in rhetoric, considered as a theory of argumentation, and in poetry and drama like the Greek tragedies, which Aristotle held are actually truer than history because they show us not so much how things are but how they must be. In both uses of language, metaphor works with already existing language into which it introduces a 'twist' or derivation that makes it say something new; hence the semantic innovation in metaphor itself depends on the use of language, on discourse as Ricoeur defines it. This transgressive or transformative aspect of metaphor is what makes it capable of creating new meaning by disturbing the existing logical order at the same time that it begets it in a new form. It does so, as Aristotle had already recognized, because it makes us 'see' things differently, not by imitating them in the sense of producing a copy but by redescribing them. This is why metaphor has a referential and ultimately an ontological as well as a creative function (Pellauer 2007:67).

Pellauer, David
2007 Ricoeur: A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Continuum.

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Ricoeur on the Quasi-Past of Fiction

05/12/2011 By Kelly Cooper

"The interpretation I am proposing here of the 'quasi-historical' character of fiction quite clearly overlaps with the interpretation I also proposed of the 'quasi-fictive' character of the historical past. If it is true that one of the functions of fiction bound up with history is to free, retrospectively, certain possibilities that were not actualized in the historical past, it is owing to its quasi-historical character that fiction itself is able, after the fact, to perform its liberating function. The quasi-past of fiction in this way becomes the detector of possibilities buried in the actual past. What 'might have been'—the possible in Aristotle's terms—includes both the potentialities of the 'real'past and the 'unreal' possibilities of pure fiction.

This deep affinity between verisimilitude of pure fiction and the unrealized possibilities of the historical past explains perhaps, in turn, why fiction's freedom in relation to the constraints of history—constraints epitomized by documentary proof —does not constitute, as was stated above, the final word about the freedom of fiction. Free from the external constraint of documentary proof, is not fiction internally bound by its obligation to its quasi-past, which is another name for the constraint of verisimilitude? Free from…, artists must still render themselves free for…. If this were not the case, how could we explain the anguish and the suffering of artistic creation? Does not the quasi-past of the narrative voice exercise an internal constraint on novelistic creation, which is all the more imperious in that it does not coincide with the external constraint of documentary facts? And does not the difficult law of creation, which is to 'render' in the most perfect way the vision of the world that animates the narrative voice, simulate, to the point of being indistinguishable from it, history's debt to the people of the past, to the dead? Debt for debt, who, the historian or the novelist, is the most insolvent?" (Ricoeur 1990:191-192).

Ricoeur, Paul
1990[1985] Time and Narrative: Volume 3. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer, trans. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

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Arendt on Posthumous Fame

02/12/2011 By Kelly Cooper

"Fama, that much-coveted goddess, has many faces, and fame comes in many sorts and sizes—from the one-week notoriety of the cover story to the splendor of an everlasting name. Posthumous fame is one of Fama’s rarer and least desired articles, although it is less arbitrary and often more solid than the other sorts, since it is only seldom bestowed upon mere merchandise. The one who stood most to profit is dead and hence it is not for sale. Such posthumous fame, uncommercial and unprofitable, has now come in Germany to the name and work of Walter Benjamin, a German-Jewish writer who was known, but not famous, as contributor to magazines and literary sections of newspapers for less than ten years prior to Hitler's seizure of power and his own emigration. There were few who still knew his name when he chose death in those early fall days of 1940 which for many of his origin and generation marked the darkest moment of the war—the fall of France, the threat to England, the still intact Hitler-Stalin pact whose most feared consequence at that moment was the close co-operation of the two most powerful secret police forces in Europe. Fifteen years later a two-volume edition of his writings was published in Germany and brought him almost immediately a succès ďestime that went far beyond the recognition among the few which he had known in his life. And since mere reputation, however high, as it rests on the judgement of the best, is never enough for writers and artists to make a living that only fame, the testimony of a multitude which need not be astronomical in size, can guarantee, one is doubly tempted to say (with Cisero), Si vivi vicissent qui morte vicerunt—how different everything would have been 'if they had been victorious in life who have won victory in death.'

Posthumous fame is too odd a thing to be blamed upon the blindness of the world or the corruption of a literary milieu. Nor can it e said that it is the bitter reward of those who were ahead of their time—as though history were a race track on which some contenders run so swiftly that they simply disappear from the spectator's range of vision. On the contrary, posthumous fame is usually preceded by the highest recognition among one's peers. When Kafka died in 1924, his few published books had not sold more than a couple of hundred copies, but his literary friends and the few readers who had almost accidentally stumbled on the short prose pieces (none of the novels was as yet published) knew beyond doubt that he was one of the masters of modern prose. Walter Benjamin had won such recognition early, and not only among those whose names at that time were still unknown, such as Gerhard Scholem, the friend of his youth, and Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, his first and only disciple, who together are responsible for the posthumous edition of his works and letters. Immediate, instinctive, one is tempted to say, recognition came from Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who published Benjam's essay on Goethe's Elective Affinities in 1924, and from Bertold Brecht who upon receiving the news of Benjamin's death is reported to have said that this was the first real loss Hitler had caused to German literature. We cannot know if there is such a thing as altogether unappreciated genius, or whether it is the daydream of those who are not geniuses; but we can be reasonably sure that posthumous fame will not be their lot" (Arendt 1995:153-155).

Arendt, Hannah
1995[1955] Men in Dark Times. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace & Company.

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Ricoeur on the Concept of Religious Freedom

30/11/2011 By Kelly Cooper

"The concept of religious freedom can be approached in several ways and on several levels. For my part, I discern three. First, one can raise questions about the freedom of the act of faith; one then situates the problem in the field of an essentially psychological or anthropological discussion. But faith is not thereby recognized in its theological specificity; it is treated like a species of belief, and the freedom of the act of faith appears as a particular case of the general power of choosing, or, as we say, of forming an opinion.

On a second level, questions of political science can be raised about the right to profess a specific religion; it is not only a matter of subjective conviction but of public expression of opinion. Religious freedom is then a particular case of the general right to profess opinions without being intimidated by public power. This right forms part of the political pact (contract) which renders the right of one person reciprocal to the right of another. In the last analysis, the basis of this freedom consists not in the psychological power to choose but in the mutual recognition of free wills within the framework of a politically organized community. In this politics of freedom, religion figures as a cultural power, a recognized public force; and the freedom that one claims for it is the more legitimate as religion is not its exclusive beneficiary.

On a third level, the one on which I will try to situate myself, religious freedom signifies the quality of freedom that pertains to the religious phenomenon as such. There is a hermeneutics of this freedom to the degree that the religious phenomenon itself exists only in the historical process of interpretation and reinterpretation of the word that engenders it. Therefore I understand the hermeneutics of religious freedom as the explication of the founding word, or, as we say, the proclamation of the kerygma" (Ricoeur 1974:402-403).

Ricoeur, Paul
1974[1969] The Conflict of Interpretations. Don Ihde, ed. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

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Habermas on Social Identity

26/11/2011 By Kelly Cooper

"The fundamental question of the continued existence of a truth-dependent mode of socialization constitutive of society is, as one can see, not easy to answer. This could lead one to think that it is not at all a theoretically resoluble question, but a practical question: should we rationally desire that social identity be formed through the minds of socially related individuals or should it be sacrificed to the problem—real or imagined—of complexity? To pose the question in this way is, of course, to answer it. Whether the constituents of a rational form of life should be retained cannot be made the object of a rational will-formation that depends on those very constituents. This requires, in any event, an appeal to the partiality for reason. As partisanship, however, this partiality can be justified only so long as alternatives are posed within an already accustomed, shared communicative form of life. As soon as an alternative appears that breaks this circuit of predecided intersubjectivity, the only universalizable partiality—the interest in reason itself—becomes particular. Luhmann poses such an alternative: He subordinates, at the methodological level, all areas of interaction steered through discursively redeemable validity claims to systems-rational claims to power and increasing power. Such monopolistic claims of an eccentric administration permit no possibility of appeal; that is, they may not be measured against standards of practical rationality, as was the case even in the Leviathan.

This perspective leads 'old European' thought into temptation, and not for the first time. One has already accepted his opponent's point of view if one resigns before the difficulties of enlightenment, and, with the goal of a rational organization of society, withdraws into actinism—that is, if one makes a decisionistic start in the hope that retrospectively, after the successful fact, justifications will be found for the costs that have arisen. Furthermore, the partiality for reason just as little justifies the retreat to a Marxistically embellished orthodoxy, which today can lead at best to the establishment without argument of sheltered and politically ineffective subcultures. Both paths are forbidden to a practice that binds itself to a rational will, that is, that does not avoid demands for foundations, but demands theoretical clarity about what we do not know. Even if we could not know much more today than my argumentation sketch suggests—and that is little enough—this circumstance would not discourage critical attempts to expose the stress limits of advanced capitalism to conspicuous tests; and it would most certainly not paralyze the determination to take up the struggle against the stabilization of a nature-like social system over the heads of its citizens, that is, at the price of—so be it!— old European human dignity" (Habermas 1975:142-143).

Habermas, Jürgen
1975[1973] Legitimation Crisis. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

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