The significance of metaphor in metaphilosophy: philosophical activity as combat, play, and aesthetic experience

Abstract

This dissertation addresses the importance of metaphors in metaphilosophical discourse. Bringing together a variety of resources, from cognitive linguistics and hermeneutics to Chinese philosophy and aesthetics, it examines three specific metaphors for philosophical activity: combat, play, and aesthetic experience. Chapter One opens with a series of arguments concerning the role of metaphors in thinking and understanding. Chapter Two explores one of the most dominant metaphors for philosophical activity: the combat metaphor. Situating this metaphor as arising from a specific socio-historical location in ancient Greece, the chapter proceeds to critique the adequacy of this metaphor. Chapter Three draws on the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer and the early Chinese text Zhuangzi in order to build an account of play from which to understand the metaphor of philosophical activity as play. Chapter Four moves from play to aesthetic experience, constructing an account of aesthetic experience using both western and Chinese aesthetics. It focuses on the concepts of experience and distance, as well as the triadic structure of artist-work-participant, mapping these onto philosophical activity. The dissertation argues that the aesthetic experience metaphor is more adequate than either the combat or play metaphors on their own, and concludes by examining the role of oppositionality in philosophical activity, understood through the aesthetic experience metaphor.