On Metaphors, Metaphors, and Metaphors

Ah, metaphors. I found it interesting to trace the apparent importance of them in ancient Mediterranean culture throughout the last three texts. They just keep appearing. Plato used them throughout Phaedrus, perhaps most noticeably in his use of two winged horses and a charioteer to represent the soul (149). Then we have Aristotle extolling metaphor in Rhetoric as a something that "gives style clearness, charm, and distinction as nothing else can" (238). Finally, we have the unknown author or authors of Rhetorica ad Herennium writing of the use of metaphor in creating "vivid mental picture" (268). These continued appearances of metaphor both in use and in discussions of their important place in rhetoric seem to indicate that they were already an important focus in the culture of rhetoric.

However, I'm even more interested in the persistence of underlying metaphors that were clearly in use thousands of years ago just as they are now. Aristotle and the writer or writers of Rhetorica ad Herennium focus on what could be described as marginal metaphors, or those that are not systematic in language and culture. However, there are other metaphors such as IDEAS ARE OBJECTS that are systematic in both modern times and the translations of the texts we have been reading. For an example of the IDEAS ARE OBJECTS metaphor, see how Aristotle writes about accepting oaths like they are physical things (212). These metaphors are all around us just as they were all around the writers we are studying, assuming that the metaphors hold up through translation. The systematic nature of metaphor is discussed in depth in Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, who claim that "our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature" (3).

I find it comforting that these sorts of connections can be drawn between our own modern culture and the cultures that the writers of our texts were living in, as I think it shows a link in human thought processes that is persistent and inherent. In this case, we understand things in relations to other things. And that's why what Aristotle tells us about metaphor is as applicable today as it was more than two millennia ago.