Moderna | 2022 | N. 1-2

In many scientific fields metaphors hold the function of «generators of theory». In this paper I deal with their presence in the humanities, referring to theory of literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis and economics.

The metaphor is traditionally considered the queen of figures of speech, the most creative among them. Such creativity manifests itself in its capacity to intercept similarities that are not banal ; on what dimension, though ? According to Aristotle, and a long tradition that still gathers widespread consensus, the similarities are found in actuality. However, in his 1954 fundamental article Max Black claims that at the very least there is the possibility that the similarities are invented. On what, then, do they rest? Retrieving Heidegger’s work on The Thing (1950), and drawing inspiration from his argument that the artisan, crafting a jug, shapes the void, this article extends such a perspective to the metaphor, even though Heidegger himself disregarded it due to his perceiving the metaphor as tied to metaphysics. The dominance of possibility – and of relationships – on empirical reality justifies the definition offered here: the metaphor as «queen of the void». Likewise, it legitimizes an Heideggerian conception of the metaphor, one that is able to free it from the constraints of metaphysics.

Gaston Bachelard’s philosophical work is well studied by epistemologists and aesthetics scholars. However, Bachelard’s role in the history of literary theory is problematic. Apart from the consideration received by the nouvelle critique, the work of the Bar-sur-Aube philosopher has been little studied by literary theorists who have underestimated a literary criticism characterised by continuous overlaps with the philosophy of mathematics. One way to enhance Bachelard’s thought in literary criticism could be to analyse his theory of metaphor both in his epistemological and poetological work. In the context of his critique of humanistic culture, Bachelard equates metaphors with «epistemological obstacles» that could stop scientific progress. With the same provocative attitude and from the point of view of his philosophy of imagination, Bachelard considers metaphor an intellectualistic phenomenon that risks undermining an active reception of literary images. Nevertheless, the French philosopher attempts to construct a new concept of metaphor in the epistemological and poetological spheres. In this essay we will try to examine the role of metaphor in Bachelard’s thought, referring also to the important contributions of the epistemologists and Bachelard’s scholars Charles Alunni and Vincent Bontems. In the first part of the paper, we analyse Bachelard’s critique of the use of metaphors which keep scientists away from the activity of rational abstraction. Nevertheless, we highlight Bachelard’s revitalisation of the concept of metaphor, both by reducing it to its ‘illustrative value’ and by assimilating it to the acts of consciousness of the esprit mathématique. The second part of our essay will highlight the polemic against the theoretical visions of literary criticism that reduce metaphor to a sign and the need to ‘live’ metaphors in their ontogenetic immediacy by following their imaginative dynamism. In the third part of the paper, we will verify the continuities between Bachelard’s epistemological and poetological thought, showing how simple mathematical concepts are applied within the study of metaphors in literature in order to construct an ‘objective literary criticism’.

The paper is focused on metaphor in philosophical discourse, taking its cue from Vico’s De Constantia Jurisprudentis (chap. V, II), where the philosopher describes the sequence of metaphors by which the word ‘property’ (proprietas) comes at its own literal meaning, meaning who nevertheless is a trope in comparison with the original expression. This path from metaphoric to proper meaning and vice versa, a palindromic loop, is indeed the temporal development of the originary paradox : to admit the improper meaning of that same notion of ‘property’, in the light of which to explain the tropes. Such a paradox, if interpreted as a derridean undecidable, could become a textual resource.

For a long time, metaphors have played an important role in depicting language history. In this study, we contrast early metaphors on language history, such as the family tree or the wave model, with recent metaphors that were popularized after the quantitative turn, such as forests of trees or phylogenetic networks. Speculating about metaphors which could become important in the future, we conclude that a vivid discussion about the usefulness and the concrete implications of metaphors plays a key role for the development of models for language history in historical linguistics.

The author aims at demonstrating that language in the human species originates from the enormous inheritance of states of consciousness from animal evolution, which at birth constitute a fluid bundle of states of consciousness due to the child’s cerebral immaturity. During the learning of words the bundle of linguistic states of consciousness, together with their grammatical and syntactic processing, differentiates from this fluid bundle. According to this development, the processing of the fluid bundle characterises our thinking, while that of the linguistic bundle characterises the possibilities of its expression in language. The metaphor can be explained through the amount of fluid states of consciousness that do not become part of the linguistic bundle, but remain available in language to express thought processing. The paper illustrates with many examples how metaphorical processes act as a natural and necessary connection between the two bundles, complementing the translatability of thought in language. The study of certain psychoanalytic metaphors in Freud and Jung illustrates their particular functions in supporting and clarifying the fundamental concepts of their respective theories.

This contribution supplies a catalogue of metaphors referring to the semantics of space, boundaries, trees, optics, weaving, agriculture, books, theater, games, music, medicine, living organisms, mechanics.