Notes on Metaphor Ted Cohen The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 34, No. 3. (Spring, 1976), pp. 249-259. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28197621%2934%3A3%3C249%3ANOM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism is currently published by The American Society for Aesthetics.
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Notes on Metaphor T H I SP A P E R is a very informal discussion, mostly of two common theses which, in various formulations, are separately or together a t the center of most current theories of metaphor. They are that (1) In a metaphor the meaning of a t least one term has changed, and (2) A metaphor taken literally is false. While articulating the temptation to accept both claims I will show that the easy, ready acceptance of either is a mistake. Although the first must somehow be true, both are too crude and reassuring, and this is probably more important than the fact that the second is simply false. I offer no construction of my own to take the place of these two theses, and I have some doubt that there is any general "theory of metaphor" to be pursued or even any individual "principles" to be found. I do offer a kind of corrective principle in the form of the suggestion that the theses have misled us twice: once, into believing that the main mechanism of metaphor is clear, a t least in outline; and again into looking in the wrong place to discern the mechanisms of metaphor.
even pictures), until we can give a satisfactory account of simple metaphorical statements. The two theses are related, and are often advanced as supporting one another. To put it roughly, they go together in this way: The statement 'x is F' is false. But this can be a sign that 'F' is being used figuratively, and we then realize that 'F' is not being used with its customary meaning (call that F,), but with a different, metaphorical, meaning ( F , ) . Thus we come to understand 'x is F' not as meaning that x is F , , which is false, but as meaning that x is FM,which is true.
11. Meaning This rough account cannot be all there is to it. It cannot be that FL and F, are only two different and unrelated meanings of "F." If we thought so, we would lose the distinction between terms used metaphorically and terms which are ambiguous. Perhaps this distinction is not rigid, and a t times it may be drawn arbitrarily; but there is a difference. In The First National is a bank
and
The side of the Mississippi is a bank I. T h e standard view I will restrict the discussion to single the term "bank" appears, we may say, statements, and, generally, to predicates. with two different meanings. We must not This simplifies things, and although it assimilate to this case the behavior of may, in the end, oversimplify, we have "pig" as we go from little chance of accounting for other things Porky is a pig said to be metaphors (for instance, whole poems and novels, or parts of them, and Smith is a pig. TEDCOHENis associate professor of philosophy a t the University of Chicago.
There is some connection between what is
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meant by "pig" when it's said of Porky and what's meant by it when it's said of one's neighbor, the slobbish, brutish Smith. If there are an FL and an F , then these are not simply two meanings of "F." It is easy to see that FL and F ,are related, and nearly impossible to say clearly what the relation is. If it is impossible, then there is a serious question about what's gained by hypostatizing an FL and an F , at the start. One point of this paper is to suggest that perhaps too little is gained to warrant this approach. An eccentric and resourceful view which aims to bypass this question of meaning is Nelson Goodman's. His account, characteristically, is entirely extensional, and there is no talk of meaning. How, then, do metaphor and ambiguity differ? Chiefly, I think, in that the several uses of a merely ambiguous term are coeval and independent; none either springs from or is guided by another. In metaphor, on the other hand, a term with an extension established by habit is applied elsewhere under the influence of that h a b i t . . . .'
It remains to explain just what it is for a term used metaphorically to be used under the influence of the habitual literal use of the term. Perhaps Goodman does not explain this because he thinks there is no general explanation. I think there is none. But I want to show that in many cases the influence of the literal use is very direct and thorough; in fact, so complete that a customary reason for identifying FL and F, is undercut. This reason is the purported observation that what follows about x when x is F does not follow when x is metaphorically F. (Just as it doesn't follow that there is water near the First National from the fact that the First National is a bank, it seems not to follow from the fact that Smith is a pig that Smith has four cloven hooves and a corkscrew tail.) But as a general point the observation is wrong, and the better the metaphor the more the observation is dead wrong. For the best metaphors, a t least the best of a certain kind, holding to the point blinds one to the marvel of metaphorical transfer. Try this old favorite: Juliet is the sun.
Suppose I say this. Then, I think, it does follow that Juliet is the brightest thing I know, that everything else is lit by her presence, that I am inevitably drawn to her though I know this must be dangerous, etc. One will say that a t least some of these implications are themselves metaphors. Yes, but what does that show? That they too contain terms with changed meanings, G,, H,, and so on? Then the proof that in "Juliet is the sun" there is an F ,consists in showing that "x is F" doesn't here imply "x is G" and "x is H," but, rather, that x is GM and x is H,. No good: this simply takes the burden of justifying a distinction between FL and F,, and lays it off on an assumed distinction between GL and G,. We are still at the beginning. I am aware of the feeling that if "x is F" is a metaphor, then at least some of its implications must fail; and I am not concerned to claim that there are sentences all of whose implications go through literally and metaphorically (although some of the examples given in the next two sections may be like that). What I mean to call into question are the grounds for the dogmatic claim that some implications must fail. They involve what seem to me unclear conceptions of what a term's meaning is, and of what would constitute a change in that meaning.
Speculative interlude Much of the power of a good metaphor, what Stanley Cave11 thinks of as its limitless paraphra~ability,~ shows in the startling fact that implications continue to go through. I think of inexhaustibilitv as the markYof metaphor, in two ways. ~ i r s t the , language itself (say, English) is intrinsically capable of metaphor. We shall not run short of metaphors, and there is no way of generating them in advance. They will outrun any set of grammatical rules. Second, an individual metaphorical statement may support endless paraphrase. If it is rich enough, then although it can be paraphrased and explicated, it will have no complete "translation"-there will be no substitute which savs all that it savs without remainder. I chink this is what lies behind the sense that metaphors are irreducible. If one can be paraphrased with-
Notes o n Metaphor out end, then it is irreplaceable. And then, The second error is one of judgment. The in a sense, it is simple, an element. I t is assumption that there is some constant misleading to think of a metaphor as essen- feature which makes things (literally) F is tially a device of economy if this suggests itself too embattled to do any work in that a metaphor is principally a kind of justifying the claim that "pig" has changed abbreviation. A potent metaphor does not its meaning when it is applied successfully to Smith. To talk of meaning in such a abbreviate its paraphrase; it generates it. These two points about inexhaustibility crude and simplistic way is especially taken together help to explain how the likely to be unhelpful here, because the language has a capacity nearly independ- problem requires a delicate treatment. The ent of its users. With regard to metaphor, view which claims to find an F, first has to one does not master a language "from the justify that claim and then bLable to say outside," but learns to move within it. that FM is not altogether distinct from FL. Hence the experience of finding that one's Goodman's treatment, nominalistic and words say more than one meant and being extensional, dissolves both parts of the willing to mean the rest. Finally, this problem suggests that metaphor is t h e device which T h e question why predicates apply as they do animates a living language, and that any metaphorically is much the same a s the question language with a capacity for metaphor is why they apply a s they do literally. And if we have no good answer in either case, perhaps t h a t is alive (is a language). because there is no real question.'
When a metaphorical statement displays this inexhaustibility, this is likely to be because the implications continue to stand: the sentences implied by "x is F" continue to be implied when x is metaphorically F. Still, one wants to say, not all the implications go through. (Juliet is not a burning gas, nor is she 90 million miles from me. Or is she?) But they never do, even in literal uses, do they? Not everything which is true of any pig whatsoever is true of Porky. No, one says, but enough is true of Porky to make him literally a pig. This seems an irresistible reply, but it goes wrong two ways. The first error is the assumption that a sufficient condition of something's being F will not be found in x when "x is F" is a metaphor. In Plato's Theatetus Socrates suggests as a way of identifying the sun, that it is "the brightest of the heavenly bodies that go round the earth" (208 D ) . SIf we suppose this a necessary and sufficient condition of something's being the sun, then how will it follow that in "Juliet is the sun," "sun" has a changed meaning? Anyone prepared to apply "sun" to Juliet is more than likely willing to apply "brightest of the heavenly bodies" to her: that may well be much of his reason for calling Juliet the sun. And so the condition for sameness of meaning is satisfied.
On Goodman's view, then, what makes a statement meta~horical and not literal seems largely the fact that x is not a member of the habitual, usual extension of "F." And the more standard view, which talks in terms of similarities and meanings, must ultimatelv base its claim that meaning has chang;d partly on the same fact. Thus: in "x is F," if this is a successful metaphor, "F" is predicated of x and normally, customarily, historically, that is not done. But even if this were true, why should it be enough to establish that there has been a change in the meaning of "F"? Consider: "the earth is a moving thing," "polio is a viral disease," "Lindsay is a Democrat." Each statement is true, and in each an "F" is predicated of something of which it formerly had been accounted false, or at least withheld from because of uncertainty. And in none do we feel like saying that the meaning of the predicate expression has changed. Something must have changed if we once counted "x is F" false or uncertain, and now we say it's true. Perhaps x has changed, or perhaps x is the same but we now know more about it or have different beliefs about it. The successful application of "F" to a new x is not enough, taken alone, even to indicate which of these changes has occurred: much less can it establish the occurrende of a
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drastic, linguistic change, namely change in the meaning of "F." Where are we left, then, in finding a reason for the claim that there is an FM,a new meaning for "F," when "x is F" is a metaphor? The last hope, I think, rests on a claim like this: It is not merely t h a t 'x is F' considered t o date is false; it is t h a t 'x is F' taken normally is obviously, transparently false, in fact 'x is F' is linguistically anomalous, even absurd or contradictory.
Then if x is truly F , there must be a substantial change in the conditions of the successful application of "F," substantial enough to constitute a new meaning of
"F." This last reason for citing an FMbrings us to the second claim, for if, as I believe, "x is F" can be both a metaphor and a straightforward literal truth, then "x is F" need be no transgression, logical or linguistic. Monroe Beardsley, who is a standard author on the subject of metaphor, takes it as obvious, indeed as a prelude to theory, that metaphors involve change of meaning. He says, By common definition, and by etymology, a metaphor is a transfer of meaning. both in intension a n d extension. The metaphorical modifier acquires a special sense in its particular context . . . ; a n d it applies to entities different from those i t usually applies to, in any of its normal senses.=
If "F" is being applied to a different entity, one that lies outside "F's" extension, then "x is F" is literally false, and Beardsley seems to regard this as a feature of metaphor as obvious as the putative change in meaning. In an earlier work Beardsley says, We may then restate t h e Controversion Theory [which Beardsley advances provisionally] as follows: a metaphor is a significant attribution t h a t is either indirectly self-contradictory or obviously false in its context. . . .'
Must a metaphor taken literally be linguistically or logically anomalous, or even false? Suppose that Romeo says this: The sun is warming today.
He says this on a windless, sultry day. But it is a metaphor, for it is about Juliet. This sentence is unexceptionable syntactically and semantically, and it is literally true. If
anything is odd or deviant it is the use of "the sun" to refer to Juliet, and the application to her of the term "is warming." That has nothing to do with what is usually thought of as the grammar of the sentence; and we may as well concentrate on the sentence and not on what some think of as the proposition or statement expressed by the sentence, for that statement-the one expressed by the sentence taken literally-is entirely normal. There are no "inherent tensions, or oppositions, within the metaphor itself," as Beardsley says there should be,' whether we take the metaphor itself to be the sentence or what the sentence usually means. Michael Reddy has made a similar point with regard to the inability of more up-todate grammar to account for metaphor. After a persuasive argument against regarding metaphors as semi-grammatical sentences which violate what Chomsky, Katz, and others have called "selectional restrictions," Reddy himself hypothesizes that all metaphors display an oddity, but not an ordinary syntactic one. What seems t o be the defining characteristic of' all instances of metaphorical language is a n abnormal or unconventional situation with regard to t h e normal limits of referentiality on words. Metaphor occurs, it seems, whenever words in a n utterance do not have referents within their conventionally defined, literal spheres of reference. . .'
Reddy notes that no current grammar has a semantic component capable of dealing with this kind of abnormal reference. He says, Further study of this subject will reveal, I believe, a degree of context sensitivity as yet undreamed of in transformational models. l o
Perhaps Beardsley would embrace a t least part of Reddy's view as a way of maintaining that there is a linguistic oddity in every metaphor, expecting this to be underwritten by a super-grammar yet to be formulated. The position will remain defective, for there are metaphors which display neither sentential peculiarity nor the referential oddity described by Reddy. I will formulate a variety of counter-example metaphors to try to accommodate different ears' finding them unequally persuasive. I will refer to metaphors which are literally true as "twice-true," or as sen-
Notes o n Metaphor tences which are true in two ways. (For now I will speak of metaphors' being true or false as if there were no problem about that.) After the second section of this paper I prefer not to speak of "meanings" until the next section. But it helps to allow oneself to think freely in terms of meanings in trying to construct twice-true sentences. Problematic examples are pro'ulematic not because there is any doubt that they are true in more ways than one, but because it is not obvious that any of the ways is metaphorical. There is no test for metaphors: one must sort out the examples while one theorizes about them. Besides looking for the mark of inexhaustibility, which I discussed loosely in the last section's speculative interlude, I find it helpful to consider how readily I feel like saying "That sentence means two different things, both of which are true." Believing that in cases of rich metaphor there is not simply the appearance of an other meaning, I find the ease of that remark an indication that there is no metaphor. For instance, The sun is a gas
invites that remark, and it seems to me not to be a literally true metaphor. If you think it is, then so much the better for my argument. A similar example can be extracted from Goodman's discussion of expression, and then perhaps be used against him since he seems to hold that metaphorical truths are literally false." On his view, a painting can express blueness only if The painting is blue
is a metaphorical truth. But, as he nearly says himself, it might well be literally true. Here, again, though the sentence might be multiply true, I find no metaphor-perhaps partly because I find none in the application of "blue" to a person or his mood. A ready technique for producing twicetrue sentences which are metaphors is to use negation. Take any inapt metaphor (which happens to be literally false) and negate it. Juliet is not the pale moon.
Juliet is not made of ice.
I do not share the view that the application to inanimate things of predicates of feeling must be metaphorical. But if you do, you will accept, say, Guernica is not gay.
Not all such examples are essentially negations of poor metaphors. Some begin, so to speak, as successful metaphors containing negations. Cassius is no lamb.
Jordan River does not chill the soul.
People are not sheep.
No man is an island.
Such examples refute the second claim, the claim that a metaphor must be a literal falsehood; but there is still a chance for a more modest claim. It might be held that tension between the subject and the modifier, which is what Beardsley requires,'' needn't result in literal falsity because the negation is not part of the modifier. That is, there will be a "tension" between "x" and "F," so that "x is F" will be obviously false, or self-contradictory, or whatever, but "x is not F" will be true. Later I will suggest that it can be at least as illuminating to consider the obvious truth of "x is not F" as the obvious falsity of "x is F" when "x is not F" is the metaphor. But now I would like to displace the notion of literal falsity directly. Let us avoid negation. Hitler is an animal
looks to be a twice-true metaphor. But perhaps "is an animal" seems to you to have an established other meaning. Then what of Hitler is a German
Hitler is a Nazi
Mahler is a Viennese.
It is easy to imagine contexts for figurative uses of these sentences. For certain purposes it might be best to use the term "metaphor" in a narrow sense and to classify these sentences as different figurative uses of language, and ultimately it will be good to try to distinguish kinds of
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metaphors; but in this paper I ignore those distinctions, for the theses I am discussing are usually meant to apply to a wide range of figurative speech-to metaphors in a broad sense. An interesting example is Mondrian's Composition i n a Square is flat
where the metaphorical force of "flat" is not to say that the painting is lifeless or uninspiring, but to point out that it has no depth, no inward third dimension.13 For another example, imagine t h a t Charles is a compassionate man and also a skillful one in dealing with people. He has a great talent for restoring their spirits, for helping those who are emotionally upset to pull themselves together, for refurbishing their egos. Because of this we say, Charles is a carpenter.
And then suppose that Charles happens to be literally a carpenter. Better than my story is the New Testament, which gives US "Jesus was a carpenter." I shall give no more examples here to show that metaphors needn't be sententially or referentially peculiar, or literally false, since I think the ones already given are adequate clues for anyone who wants more. IV. Meaning and truth reconsidered The two theses seem so innocent and attractive that it is difficult to imagine beginning a "theory of metaphor" with neither. If they cannot be set out less baldly than I have them a t the start of this paper, then one is tempted to give up, drawing a lesson combined from two masters. Aristotle says that genius is required to make metaphors. Suppose it is also required, in some measure, to recognize and understand metaphors. Kant says that genius is precisely the ability to make sense, original sense, when the sense that is made cannot be explicated by rules. Whether or not there can be a theory of metaphor, if there are rules to be found, I think they won't be found by concentrating on sentences, their meanings, and their truth values. Why has anyone thought that a meta-
phor must be false literally? Perhaps he has not chanced on any counter-examples, but still, why generalize? Perhaps there is thought to be some connection between literal falsity and forced change of meaning, like that I suggested in section one. But this will be the beginning of a bad argument. Even if the meaning of "F" changes from FL to F when "x is F" is a metaphor, x might still be FL, might still be in the normal extension of "F." For Goodman, who has no use for the notion of meaning, it may have been critical that metaphors be literally false. Of the authors I've cited, Goodman is the only one who speaks freely of the truth and falsity of metaphors. When "x is F" is true, how is Goodman to explain that it is a metaphor if it is (also) literally true? According to him a metaphor is the application somewhere else of a label with an extension established by habit, with the new application being effected under the influence of the habit. l 4 Although Goodman himself seems to note that x might be within the normal extension of "F"15 how can he permit this? What one wants to say is something like this: when "x is F" is twice-true, the reason why x is metaphorically F is different from the reason why x is literally F. And so one is tempted to say that "F" has two meanings. But since he has forsaken vague appeals to meaning, what resources remain to Goodman? I think of two tentative possibilities. One is to claim that in, say, "Hitler is an animal," "is an animal" does not have its normal extension-established-by-habit, for although Hitler belongs both to that extension and the new one, other things belong to one but not the other. For instance, sheep belong to the old extension but not the new one, and Venus fly traps belong to the new one but not the old one. I feel uneasy about this account, for it's not clear that there is any new, determinate, extension. And even if there is, one cannot count on its differing extensionally from the old one. For instance, a plant lover disgusted by the voracity and brutality he sees throughout the animal kingdom may say, All animals are animals
where this is no tautology. The second
Notes on Metaphor possibility is to claim a distinction not in terms of the extension, but in terms of the habit which establishes the extension. Then what is significant is not whether x is in the habitual extension of "F." but whether the habit which is responsible for placing it there is a t work in this use of "x is F." This will be a very subtle distinction, since on Goodman's view, the original habit influences metaphorical applications (this is the difference between metaphor and ambiguity). There will have to be a distinction between applying "F" to x as a direct consequence of the habit which controls the normal use of "F," and doing so onlv "under the influence" of that habit. I haGe doubts that this distinction can be made perspicuous. However Goodman may be able to handle twice-true metaphors, I will, in the end, forego my objections to talk of meaning and its change, though not without learning something from them. Twice-true metaphors seem to demand a t least casual talk of meaning: if "x is F" is twice-true, then two things can be meant in calling x F. But by far the more persuasive argument for talk of two meanings comes from the cases in which metaphors are literally false. In such a case, if we are to call the metaphor true we will need something else to be false, and a convenient explanation will cite two meanings or propositions or statements associated with the sentence. one metaphorical and true, the other literal and false. Another option is available: to give up applying "true" and "false" to metaphors. It can seem odd, inept, or perverse to say that a metaphor is true, but there is a compelling, if somewhat rhetorical, reason to do so-namely, to combat directly a traditional view which denies truth to metaphors on principle. When faced with the putatively tough-minded view that only literal statements have truth values because only they have truth conditions, we should stiffen and ask why it's thought that metaphors have no truth conditions. "The chairman ploughed through the committee" is true if and only if the chairman ploughed through the committee. What's wrong with that? Why is it any different with "Snow is white?"
I see this reply as dialectical, or provisional, in this sense: I do not care to begin the argument by asserting that truth is truth, literal or figurative, and that metaphors are "cognitive," "verifiable," and true just as any statements are; but I do want to assert this as a reply to the dogma that only such statements are good or serious or scientific and that metaphors are not like that. In the end we may no longer associate truth conditions and the rest with seriousness. and then we will be a t the beginning, ready to try to understand metaphor with no preconceptions. For Beardsley, there has been another reason for insisting on the literal falsity or oddity of metaphors. In the Encyclopedia essay Beardsley gives as a central problem the need to explain how a metaphor is recognized to be a metaphor. And earlier, in a brief, generally laudatory estimate of Black's essay, Beardsley says, . . . I judge his theory incomplete in not explaining what it is about the metaphorical attribution that informs us that the modifier is metaphorical rather than literal.
Beardsley wants the sentence to be somehow anomalous as a sign that it is not to be taken literally. Beardsley had not noticed the full range of possible signs. First, even if the sign is to be in the sentence itself, there is no need for it to consist in self-contradictoriness or obvious falsity. In some cases it is not a matter of falsity but of obvious truth. What counts is neither truth nor falsity so much as the obviousness itself. If something is obviously true or false, and is thought so by all concerned, then it is not said and meant, for there can be no point. There is likely to be no more "point" in saying that the Mondrian is flat-literally, than there is in saying that Juliet is the sun-literally. Second, besides mistaking what the sign must be, Beardsley has not seen where it can be. There is no need to have it in the sentence itself. Beardsley has referred to the metaphor in its context. but I think he underestimates the extent and complexity of the relevant context. For simple statements that context must be what Austin calls the "total speech act." To discover what the words
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mean, and certainly to discover that they don't mean what they customarily mean, one looks beyond the words, taking into account the beliefs and intentions of the speaker and what speech act he is performing.17 When I say The painting is not flat.
to a child, I may be drawing its attention to the fact that the pigment is piled up. When I say it to students of twentieth-century art, I may be drawing their attention to the uneven plasticity in the work of a Mondrian contemporary. To tell the difference you must take account of what I could or would be saying to different people, given what you know that I know about those people. In all cases in which the words are not to be taken literally, there must be something which blocks their being taken literally. They may be senseless if taken literally. But they needn't be. They may be blatantly false if taken literally. But they may be true. What they must be, if taken literally, is something the speaker could not mean in these circumstances. There are things we cannot mean which are not (sententially) meaningless. An account of the dynamics of metaphor when it occurs in simple, spoken sentences must refer to the total speech act in which the sentence is animated. And, I think, a similar account is needed for metaphors which occur in poems, novels, and other written works. Often these works must, to be understood, be thought of as records, or partial manifestations, not only of speech but of whole speech acts: one must refer to a speaker (not necessarily the author), his beliefs and intentions, and in particular his beliefs about his readers and their beliefs. This can be a complex and difficult reconstruction, but I think we undertake it, if we read at all well, when reading almost any literary work.'' If we do this, then we have much more than an individual sentence to look to for clues to the presence of metaphor. l g For all the need to look beyond sentences to find the workings of metaphor, it is characteristic of metaphors that the figuring power is carried in the sentence (though
there may be no way of telling from the sentence alone that it is figurative). On this point metaphor contrasts with irony.20 When we speak about the meaning of someone's utterance "p," sometimes we feel no need to mark a distinction between what "p" means and what the speaker means by "p." When we do press this distinction, metaphor and irony seem typically to come down on different sides. When "p" is metaphorical, it seems right to talk of the (metaphorical) meaning of "p"; when "p" is ironic, it seems right to talk of what is meant (ironically) by saying "p." "Juliet is the sun" means that Juliet is the brightest thing in the universe, and so on. "You're a swell fellow" can't mean that you're a bum who's let me down, but I could mean that by saying "You're a swell fellow" to you. This point is related to another difference between metaphor and irony. Irony differs from metaphor and most other figures of speech in its intimate attachment to the speaker: ironic meaning is speaker's meaning; other figurative meaning is often meaning of the speaker's words. But irony is unlike metaphor and like other figures in being something like a simple and straightforward function of literal meaning. If "pH is uttered ironically, then the speaker's meaning is something like the "opposite" of what it would be if he meant "pH literally. Similar functions characterize many of the figures tabulated in traditional rhetoric, though in many cases they lead from the literal meaning of "p" to a figurative meaning of "p" and do not lead to a speaker's figurative meaning. There is no function for metaphor. There is no way to get the figurative meaning of "pH from the literal meaning of "pH plus the fact that "pH is a metaphor. One may think there is-namely that from "x is F" we get "x is like things which are F"; but this is a misapprehension. Max Black has made this clear. One of the many services performed by Black's paper is the destruction of the apparently comfortable, traditional view according to which metaphors are compressed or elliptical similes. The failure of this view can be illustrated in examples
Notes on Metaphor like "Juliet is the sun" when it is pointed out that the corresponding simile "Juliet is like the sun" is itself a metaphor. There is no property literally possessed by both Juliet and the sun in virtue of which Juliet is said to be (literally) like the sun. The property in question, if there is one, is possessed literally by the sun but metaphorically by Juliet. And so Juliet is not like the sun in the way that she could be like, say, other tragic heroines. We might say that she is metaphorically like the sun. The older view, challenged by Black and, following him, Goodman among others, had taken similes to be literal, and in claiming that any metaphor could be expanded into a simile it was claiming that any metaphor could be reduced to a literal statement. This is a misapprehension. Note on metaphor and simile Black's point displaces the view of simile as more fundamental than metaphor, as the real figure of which metaphor is only a literary presentation. It does not follow that the difference between metaphor and simile is insignificant. Stanley Cavell says: T h e 'and so on' which ends my example of paraphrase is significant. It registers what William Empson calls t h e 'pregnancy' of metaphors, the burgeoning of meaning in them. Call it what you like; in this feature metaphors differ from some, but perhaps not all, literal discourse. And differ from t h e similar device of simile: t h e inclusion of 'like' in a n expression changes t h e rhetoric. If you say 'Juliet is like t h e sun,' two alterations a t least seem obvious: the drive of it leads me t o expect you t o continue by saying in what definite respects they are like (similes are just a little bit pregnant); a n d , in complement, I wait for you t o tell me what you mean, t o deliver your meaning, so to speak. It is not u p to me t o find as much as I can in your word^.^'
If this report seems right (as it does to me) and more faithful to one's sense of these figures than a severe reconstruction that insists that "x is y" implies "x is like y" and lets it go a t that, then this is partly because of the rightness in moving from stark sentences to the saying of the sentences. Thus Cavell says nothing about "Juliet is like the sun" but talks about what's in the works when you say it. For those who accept this point, it underlies a parallel between metaphor and simile brought out in twice-true cases.
"Charles is a carpenter" could be true both metaphorically and literally. "Charles is like a carpenter" could be true as what we might call a figurative or metaphorical simile, where it amounts to something like "Charles is like a carpenter in being a polisher: just as a carpenter sands and varnishes wood, Charles brings out the submerged glow in people." The simile could be twice-true, for Charles might also be like a carpenter literally, say, in belonging to a union with insufficient room for Black apprentices. So: a metaphor and its corresponding literal simile can be true, and so can a figurative simile and the corresponding metaphor-taken-literally; and both metaphors and similes can be twicetrue; but it seems that a metaphor and its corresponding simile can't both be said either figuratively or literally. If there is no function for getting the meaning of a metaphor, and there are no simple recognition signs for detecting metaphors, then it is a kind of marvel that we are able to identify metaphors a t all in some cases, and yet more marvelous that we are able to understand them. That is why it seems too narrow, straight, and square to call them true. Stanley Cavell But to say t h a t Juliet is t h e sun is not to say something false; i t is, a t best, wildly false, and t h a t is not being just false. This is part of t h e fact t h a t if we are t o suggest t h a t what t h e metaphor says is true, we shall have to say it is wildly true-mythically or magically or primitively true.12
To produce this kind of true sentence may well be to do something remarkable enough to credit the feat to genius. And in some cases it is remarkable in a different way that we are able to apprehend such a truth when someone has made it for us. I see no reason to be afraid of calling metaphors true (and letting those who care to do so identify the meaning of a metaphor with its "truth conditions"). But I see no compelling reason to call them true, save as a n offense to those who insist that it isn't proper logic to do so; and I do, after all, have some worry that the extensional conception of metaphors as true just as literal statements are true, may leave us compla-
TED COHEN
cently forgetting the non-extensional features-the magic of their production and c~mprehension.'~ Why can't we just lay aside the question of truth? To return to the question of meaning: if we can keep it in mind that because the literal meaning is vitally present working unpredicable results, metaphorical meaning is not just another meaning, then let us say that in metaphors we encounter new or altered meanings, but let us not suppose we understand very well what that means.'*
' Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis, 1968), p. 71. =Stanley Cavell, "Ending the Waiting Game: A Reading of Beckett's Endgame," in Cavell's Must We Mean What We Say ? (New York, 1969), p. 122, footnote. See also Cavell's "Aesthetic Problems of Modern Philosophy." in the same volume, p. 79. = I t is irrelevant that this remark about the sun is false. All that matters is that this characterization lay near the center of what Max Black would call the commonplaces associated with the Greek word for "sun" as it was used by Plato and his contemporaries. The notion of associated commonplaces is introduced by Black in section five of his now nearly classic paper, "Metaphor," in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. LV (1954-1955), 273-294. 'Goodman, op. cit., p. 78. 'Some of the points made in this section are like some made by Timothy Binkley in his acute and useful" "On the Truth and Probity of Metaphor" The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 33, no. 2 (Winter, 1974), 171-180, which I found too late for me to address here. Besides a number of good examples Binkley gives references to various writers who have thought that a metaphor taken literally must be false. Monroe Beardsley, the "Metaphor" entry in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York, 1967), vol. 5, 285. 'Monroe Beardsley, Aesthetics (New York, 1958), p. 142. Monroe Beardsley, "The Metaphorical Twist," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. XXII, no. 3 (March, 1962), 294. BMichael J . Reddy, "A Semantic Approach to Metaphor," Papers from the Fifth Regionab Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, edited by Robert I. Binnick, et al., published by the Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago (Chicago, 1969), p. 248. l o Ibid., pp. 248-249. l 1 I a m not sure that Goodman holds that metaphors are invariably literal falsehoods. On this point Languages of Art is confusing. In a number of passages Goodman speaks as if he thought that every
metaphorical truth is a literal falsehood. For instance. (i) " . . . although what is metaphorically true is not literally true, neither is it merely false [i.e. metaphorical truths are true]" (p. 51). (ii) "Metaphorical possession is indeed not literal possession . . . " (p. 68). (iii) "That is, although a predicate that applies to an object metaphorically does not apply literally, it nevertheless applies" (pp. 68-69). (iv) "But metaphorical application of a label to an object defies a n explicit or tacit prior denial of t h a t label to t h a t object . . . . Application of a term is metaphorical only if to some extent contraindicated" (p. 69). (v) "What expresses sadness is metaphorically sad. And what is metaphorically sad is actually but not literally sad . . . " (p. 85). When these quotations are set back in context there may be ways of reading them which do not commit Goodman to the claim that every true metaphor is literally false. In (ii) perhaps Goodman is saying that what it is to be metaphorically true is not what it is to be literally true, leaving open the question whether something might be both. In (v) perhaps Goodman thinks the referent of "what" is established by the discussion which began on p. 50, and he is talking here about a gray, sad painting, and not about everything whatever which happens to express sadness. I don't know whether all five passages can be divorced from the claim that true metaphors are literally false. If they can, then this will be easier to read: (ui) ". . . a metaphorically blue picture is more likely to be literally blue than literally red" ( p . 83). If (vi) says, as it seems to, that "x is blue" can be true both metaphorically and literally, then whether or not it can be reconciled with (i)-(v),it seems to me hopelessly at odds with one part of Goodman's account of expression. In his analysis of the relation of expression, for which his remarks on metaphor are a prelude, Goodman construes expression to be a special case of "exemplification," namely, the case in which the exemplified property is possessed metaphorically. Leaving all the details of Goodman's account aside, I point out that this means that if x expresses F-ness, than "x is F" is metaphorically true. Now consider this passage: (uii) "Architects, for instance, like to speak of some buildings as expressing their functions. But however effectively a glue factory may typify gluemaking, it exemplifies being a glue factory literally rather than metaphorically. A building may express fluidity or frivolity or fervor; but to express being a glue factory it would have to be something else, say a toothpick plant" (pp. 90-91). Assuming that this is not a point about glue factories as such, Goodman suggests no reason for the last sentence of (vii) besides the claim that if "x is a glue factory" is metaphorically true then it is literally false. And there seems no reason for that claim unless, despite (vi), Goodman holds that every metaphorical truth is literally false. Whatever the resolution of Goodman's position
Notes o n Metaphor in Languages of Art, it should square with this: (viii) "Even though a metaphorical statement may be literally false, metaphorical truth differs from metaphorical falsity much as literal truth differs from literal falsity," which occurs in footnote eight on p. 805 of "The Status of Style" Critical Inquiry, vol. 1, no. 4 (June, 1975). This essay is an important extension of the work of Languages of Art. Because it makes use of the account of metaphor given in the book, it is troubled by whatever difficulties arise in the earlier account, and it would be good to have them cleared up. I think Goodman must give up the claim that metaphorical truths are always literal falsehoodsif he holds it. He seems t o hold it in "The Status of Style" (however (viii) is understood) for I think it underlies this remark: (ix) "Although a style is metaphorically a signature, a literal signature is no feature of style" (p. 807 of "The Status of Style). Although the topic here is style and not expression, the remark is very much like (vii), the point about glue factories. Even on Goodman's analysis, 1 simply do not see why a glue factory could not express its function, and I do not see why an artist's signature could not be a feature of style. Goodman's analysis can accommodate both possibilities-if it is not claimed that metaphors have to be literally false. l 2 See note eight above, and also Beardsley's Encyclopedia essay (op. cit.), p. 285. l 3 Notice that many of the most obviously useful paraphrases are themselves metaphors. l 4 Goodman, op. cit., p. 71. l 5 See quotation (vi) in note eleven above, and also his discussion of various modes of metaphor in Languages of Art, pp. 81-85. Beardsley, Aesthetics, op. cit., p. 161. "There is a striking parallel here with illocutionary acts. When a sentence does not have its customary literal meaning, this cannot always be discovered without reference beyond the sentence. When an illocutionary act is not the one apparently indicated by the customary force of the performative verb being used, this cannot always be discovered without reference beyond the words. I have begun to discuss influences upon illocutionary force in "Illocutions and Perlocutions," Foundations of Language, vol. 9, no. 4 (March, 19731, 492-503, and I have begun to understand novel illocutions as analogues of meta-
phors in "Figurative Speech and Figurative Acts." The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 72, no. 19 (November 6, 1975), 669-684. "The most rich and useful groundwork on this topic I know is Wayne C. Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago, 1961). Booth has begun to consider the topic with special attention to figurative language in Rhetoric of Irony (The University of Chicago Press 1974). If, as I believe, we must postulate a speaker in order to arrive a t the meaning of a literary work, then this suggests that we are discovering not only meaning but also what Austin calls illocutionary force. To discover this we will have to suppose that we are dealing with whole speech acts, for we can't pry illocutions away from their related locutions and perlocutions. For a defense of this point see my "Illocutions and Perlocutions," op. cit. "It may be adequate as a signal of the presence of metaphors that the text is a poem. If you know that it is a poem, you read looking for poetic things. 'Y had my first glimmer of this point in conversation with Wayne Booth, though I do not know whether he would subscribe to this elaboration of the point. Cavell, op. cit., p. 79. "Ibid., p. 80. 23There is something infuriatingly elusive in Black's remark that "It would be more illuminating in some of these cases to say that the metaphor creates the similarity than to say that it formulates some similarity antecedently existing." (Black, op. cit., pp. 284285) One wants to paraphrase this remark, to make it more-what-literal? This becomes yet harder to do when one sees that Black has not (purposely, I think) restricted this characterization to metaphors, but has left it open whether literal statements might not in some cases create more than they record. Elusive or not, the remark records (or creates) a n indispensable insight. If talking about truth makes us overlook this insight, then I'm for overlooking truth. "In various parts and versions the material of this paper has been presented to a number of groups, including the Cornell Philosophy Discussion Club, the Northern Illinois University Colloquium on Aesthetics, and the Kenyon Symposium. Those discussions were very helpful to me, and so were the generous critical remarks of Monroe Beardsley, Timothy Binkley, and Allan Gibbard.
