How is it that metaphor, the clarification of one thing as something else, has become and so of import for questions of knowledge and cognition? While literature and the arts, as far back as Plato, have ever recognized metaphor as a source of poetic pregnant, this new interest is office of a shift in thinking which asserts that the metaphorical cosmos of meaning holds significance for the way we understand the structure of cognition and the world. Despite the large book of material published on the cognitive potential of metaphor, piffling has been done to assess how claims made within the field draw upon continental philosophy. This is the focus of my writing, listed on this folio. The continental tradition from Kant to the present, I maintain, extends metaphor to the point where it becomes a procedure of borrowing at the heart of the fundamental distinctions we use to think about life, frustrating any try to say what does and does not belong to a category. The challenge is to live with (or peradventure fifty-fifty enjoy) this frustration, and to address the textures of experience in the noesis that whatever desire to go to the truth will always involve reaching for what lies beyond it.

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Art, philosophy and the connectivity of concepts: Ricoeur and Deleuze and Guattari

Slide1 2019. Art, philosophy and the connectivity of concepts: Ricoeur and Deleuze and Guattari. Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology . 6:one, 21–40. In the history of philosophy, concepts are traditionally pictured equally detached containers that bring together objects or qualities based on the possession of shared, uniform properties. This newspaper focuses on a contrasting notion of the concept which holds that concepts are defined by their capacity to achieve out and connect with other concepts. Two theories in recent continental philosophy maintain this view: one from Ricoeur, the other from Deleuze and Guattari. Both are offered as attempts to bring art and philosophy into relation, but they differ over how the process of connection is theorized. With Ricoeur, a concept is only a concept if it is inherently predisposed to connect with others, and open to being misapplied through metaphor, whereas, with Deleuze and Guattari, connection is left as the full general notion of each and every concept beingness mutually consistent with other concepts, with the consistency attributed to the external activity of "bridging". I demonstrate the impact of this difference on how the philosophers perceive the art–philosophy relation, and argue that Ricoeur is amend placed to provide a theory of philosophical discourse that is open to the artful. Ricoeur can bear witness it through metaphor, while Deleuze and Guattari can just assert or state an art–philosophy relation through a series of technical claims. The significance of the showing–proverb distinction is that information technology can demonstrate the depth with which conceptual connectivity is located inside the philosophers' respective ontologies and, within this, it can help to reveal the value of conceptual connectivity for each ontology. A postprint is bachelor here.

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Insights from the metaphorical dimension of making

Celmins V_Night Sky 19

Vija Celmins, Night Sky #nineteen, 1998, charcoal on newspaper, 570 x 673 mm. Paradigm source: tate.org.united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland.

2015. Insights from the metaphorical dimension of making. Lo Sguardo, vol 17.one, pp. 373-91. Online (accessed fourteen August 2016). Working with art materials can generate novelty through metaphor, and these metaphors tin can provide new epistemological resources for visual arts enquiry. In this paper, I (a) show how the generative aspect of making tin can be attributed to the metaphorical nature of cloth, and (b) develop themes of 'collision' and 'demand' from Max Black'due south and Paul Ricoeur'south theories of metaphor to illuminate the process whereby the manipulation of fabric in art produces novelty. Textile can be metaphorical in four means: (i) fabric cannot be described without reference to a perceiver; (2) material, as something that is manipulated in fine art, has to be considered in relation to the other materials that information technology will exist acting upon or with; (three) in handling the material, the handler is also, if not equally, acted upon; and (4) in representational art, the manipulation of materials creates particular effects that telephone call for description in terms drawn from the represented subject. These operate through collision and demand to suggest lines of enquiry for visual arts research, illustrated with reference to Vija Celmins'southward charcoal cartoon Night Sky #19 (1998). The benefit to visual arts inquiry is that textile is shown to be an independent source of epistemic enquiry, beyond the dominant conceptions of material as a vehicle for self-expression and the means to achieve certain kinds of result. Read the total paper here.

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Review of Beistegui, Aesthetics Afterward Metaphysics: From Mimesis to Metaphor

Beistegui_Aesthetics 2014. 'Review of Beistegui, Aesthetics After Metaphysics', British Periodical of Aesthetics 54(4): 499–504. Tin metaphor free art from its tie to imitation, to the representation of objects? Art, or at least philosophy's concept of fine art, has been limited to faux always since Plato defined art every bit a copy of a copy in the Democracy. That is the claim made by Miguel de Beistegui in Aesthetics After Metaphysics: From Mimesis to Metaphor. The limitation occurs, Beistegui thinks, in ii means: (1) art is confined to reproducing what is given by appearances, and (two) because art is understood equally reproduction, as a doubling-up, it is always defenseless in a network of binary distinctions that engenders perpetual oscillation between opposing terms. Previous attempts to rescue art from imitation, for example, from Hegel and Adorno, have failed, he maintains, because they sustain the oscillation: a continual coaction between the sensuous and the platonic, the item and the universal, that leaves intact the thought that art must be assessed as something that represents something else. Might metaphor, the clarification of ane thing every bit something else, evade the governing metaphysical schema of the sensible and the ideal, and 'broach another infinite at the limit of metaphysics', a space of meaning or interpretation or possibility that is '"proper" to art' (p. 98)? Read the review.

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Living metaphor

IMG_1499_edited Cazeaux, C. (2011). Living metaphor. Studi Filosofici 34, 291-308.The concept of 'living metaphor' occurs a number of times in metaphor theory. A review of four primal theories – Nietzsche, Ricoeur, Lakoff and Johnson, and Derrida – reveals a distinction between theories which identify a prior, speculative nature working on or with metaphor, and theories wherein metaphor is shown to exist e'er, already active in thought. The ii cannot be left as alternatives because the 2nd, 'already agile' thesis challenges the supposition fabricated past the first that it tin can transparently or autonomously merits 'this is how things are regarding metaphor'. But neither can an impartial philosophical appraisal of the most cogent or defensible theory be made, since the status and acquit of philosophy are part of the trouble. Ii responses are considered: (ane) Lakoff and Johnson's ecological spirituality thesis which promises to make the opposition redundant on the grounds that the origin of human concepts in our shared, embodied status in the world removes all obstructions; (2) an approach based on the intersection of discourses from Nietzsche and Ricoeur, not equally a resolution but as a gesture that allows the opposition to speak near 'living metaphor'. I show that (2) results in 'living metaphor' emerging as an attentiveness to questions of what does and does non belong, inspired by tensions between 'is' and 'is non', 'from this perspective' and 'from that perspective', and 'is spoken nearly' and 'is spoken with'. Read an extract.

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Metaphor and Continental Philosophy: From Kant to Derrida

metaphor cover 02_edited Cazeaux, C. (2007). Metaphor and Continental Philosophy: From Kant to Derrida , New York: Routledge. As I annotation above, despite the large volume of material published on the cognitive potential of metaphor, trivial has been done to assess how claims made within the field draw upon continental philosophy. This is remedied in this book. I examine the human relationship between metaphor, art and scientific discipline, confronting the backdrop of mod European philosophy and, in item, the work of Kant, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. I contextualize contempo theories of the cerebral potential of metaphor within modern European philosophy and explores the bear upon which the notion of cognitive metaphor has on key positions and concepts within aesthetics, epistemology and the philosophy of science. The continental tradition from Kant to the present, I fence, extends the significance of the figure to the point where information technology becomes a tension, operating in between the fundamental distinctions of philosophy. The consequence is that the ease with which we remember nosotros can think in terms of properties belonging to objects, including what belongs to me and my experience, is thrown into doubt. Read sample chapters: Introduction; Ch 1. Kant and Heidegger on the creation of objectivity; Ch 5. Conflicting perspectives: epistemology and ontology in Nietzsche'due south will to power.

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Kant and metaphor in contemporary aesthetics

Kantian Review 8_2004Cazeaux, C. (2004). Kant and metaphor in contemporary aesthetics. Kantian Review 8: one-37. I examine Kant's impact on contemporary aesthetics by focusing on the concept of metaphor. In part i, I give a brief explanation for the popularity of metaphor as a inquiry area, and suggest that much of the thinking backside this enquiry can be traced back to Kant. I also highlight the part metaphor plays in contemporary aesthetics, and identify means in which the metaphoricity of art contributes to its critical or discursive impetus. Role two locates the origins of this critical, metaphorical aesthetic in the Critique of Judgment. Kant's argumentation in the third Critique, I show, is heavily dependent on metaphor, to the extent that his philosophy cannot be rendered systematic without it. Acknowledging this dimension of his thought, I maintain, not only draws out the epistemological and cerebral significance of metaphor but also brings to light new points of relevance between Kant and contemporary aesthetics. In the final part of my paper, I show how some of my conclusions regarding the metaphorical aspects of the Critique of Judgment are particularly relevant to the artful theories of Lyotard, Derrida, and Habermas, and suggest how the 'metaphorical Kant' proposed hither might affect their theses. Read an excerpt.

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Metaphor and the categorization of the senses

Metaphor and Symbol 17_2002Cazeaux, C. (2002). Metaphor and the categorization of the senses. Metaphor and Symbol 17(1): 3-26. The attempt to depict a particular sensation often, if non inevitably, requires the states to draw metaphorical comparisons with some other sense, for example, "a bitter, lemon yellow" and "the audio of a trumpet is ruby-red", with the end result that metaphors of the order "colour is gustation" and "audio is colour" are produced. These descriptions are singled-out from neurological synaesthesia in that they involve agile metaphorical association. However, what I testify is that the distinction between literal and metaphorical language is leap up with the history of nomenclature and, in particular, the classification of the senses. The two principal competing epistemologies in the debate are Locke'southward empiricism, which argues for the importance of literal language and the discrete nature of the senses, and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, which emphasizes the positive role played by metaphor in cognition and asserts that the senses are interrelated aspects of our bodily engagement with the world. I outline the two epistemologies, and demonstrate how they pb to different conceptions of our sensory contact with the earth and the cerebral value of metaphor.