The Classical Epic and Philosophic Imagination
Daniel White
A Philosophical Dispute:
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900):
“What
then is truth? An maneuverable army of
metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms, in brief a sum of human relations,
which are poetically and rhetorically enhanced, transferred, adorned, and which
from long usage by a people have become solidified, canonized and seem binding:
truths are illusions, about which we have forgotten what they are, metaphors,
which have been used up and have become sensuously powerless, coins, which have
lost their images and now have come to be used as metal, no more as coins. We
have never yet discovered whence the drive to truth originates: for until now
we have only heard as truthful the obligation that modern society has
established in order to exist; that is, to use the usual metaphors, morally
expressed: to lie out of obligation to an established convention, to lie as a
herd in a style binding for all.”
(Was ist also Wahrheit? Ein bewegliches Heer von
Metaphern, Metonymien, Anthropomorphismen, kurz eine Summe von menschlichen
Relationen, die, poetisch und rhetorisch gesteigert, übertragen, geschmückt
wurden, und die nach langem Gebrauch einem Volke fest, canonisch und
verbindlich dünken: die Wahrheiten sind Illusionen, von denen man vergessen
hat, dass sie welche sind, Metaphern, die abgenutzt und sinnlich kraftlos
geworden sind, Münzen, die ihr Bild verloren haben und nun als Metall, nicht
mehr als Münzen, in Betracht kommen. Wir wissen immer noch nicht, woher der
Trieb zur Wahrheit stammt: denn bis jetzt haben wir nur von der Verpflichtung
gehört, die die Gesellschaft, um zu existiren, stellt, wahrhaft zu sein, d. h.
die usuellen Metaphern zu brauchen, also moralisch ausgedrückt: von der
Verpflichtung nach einer festen Convention zu lügen, schaarenweise in einem für
alle verbindlichen Stile zu lügen.)
Aristotle on Metaphor:
Aristotle on Metaphor: Establishing a hierarchy of discourses
At Poetics 1457b 6-9, Aristotle says, “Metaphor is the bearing
over of another’s name either from genus to species or from species to genus,
or by analogy.” He goes on to give some examples: “I say that from genus to
species is, for instance, ‘My ship stands here,’ for to lie at anchor is a kind
of standing.” The genus is standing, the
species is lying at anchor, which is normally subsumed under the genus. Here, in the metaphor, the genus is “carried
over” (metapherein) to or substituted
for the species. “From species to genus,” he continues is, “Odysseus has
performed ten thousand noble deeds, for the ten thousand [the species] is many
[the genus], for which the ten thousand is now substituted” (lines 10-13). He goes on to cover the example of “species
being transferred to species” as when the poet says “Drawing life with bronze”
or “cutting with unbending bronze.”
Here, he observes, the poet has spoken of “‘to draw’ as ‘to cut’ and ‘to cut’ as ‘to
draw’; for both are [species of the genus] ‘to take something away’” (13-16).
For Aristotle, metaphor is a species of diction, which is itself a kind of
technique in the art of poetic representation (mimēsis). And although mimēsis is a form of learning (manthanein) in which the learner may infer
(sullogizesthai) that a “this” is a
“that” or that a given species falls under its genus (Poetics 4.1448b16-17), and is “more philosohical” (philosophōteron 8.1451b5-6) than
history, nevertheless he represents its techniques as less than logical. Hence
its bearing across of names from one species to another is a legitimate
technique, but only presumably for poetry, not (at least without logical
explication) for philosophy.
Aristotle (384-322 BCE) on Logic:
Aristotle's
analysis of the simplest form of argument: the three-term Syllogism. The
standard example in philosophy has always been:
All men are mortal. [Premise1 in the form:
All B's are C's.]
Socrates is a man. [Premise 2 in the form:
(All) A is B.]
Therefore, Socrates is mortal. [Conclusion
in the form: All A's are C's.]
Apollo ↔ Dionysus
philosophy poetry music
Aristotle’s
Syllogism: Logic
Bateson’s
Syllogism: Metaphor
Men are mortal. Men die.
Socrates is a man. Grass dies.
Socrates is mortal. Men are grass.
Homer, Iliad (700 BCE, VI.145-149)—Glaukos addresses Diomedes:
Great-hearted
son of Tydeus, why do you ask my lineage?
Just
like the generations of leaves, also are those of men.
For
the wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the trees,
Blooming,
produce, and the hour of spring is reborn;
So
one generation of men comes to life and one falls away.
Τυδείδη
μεγάθυμε τί ἢ
γενεὴν ἐρεείνεις;
οἵη
περ φύλλων γενεὴ
τοίη
δὲ
καὶ ἀνδρῶν.
φύλλα
τὰ
μέν
τ' ἄνεμος
χαμάδις χέει, ἄλλα
δέ
θ' ὕλη
τηλεθόωσα φύει,
ἔαρος
δ' ἐπιγίγνεται
ὥρη·
ὣς
ἀνδρῶν
γενεὴ ἣ μὲν φύει
ἣ
δ' ἀπολήγει.
Jürgen
Habermas (contemporary, i.e. a “living” philosopher, b. 1929): “Excursus on Leveling
the Genre Distinction between Philosophy and Literature”, The
Philosophical Discourse of Modernity
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987).
The rebellious labor of deconstruction aims indeed at
dismantling smuggled-in basic conceptual hierarchies, at overthrowing
foundational relationships and conceptual relations of domination, such as
those between speech and writing, the intelligible and the sensible, nature and
culture, inner and outer, mind and matter, male and female. Logic and rhetoric
constitute one of these conceptual pairs. Derrida is particularly interested in
standing the primacy of logic over rhetoric, canonized since Aristotle, on its
head. . . .
There can only be talk about "contradiction"
in the light of consistency requirements, which lose their authority or are at
least subordinated to other demands — of an aesthetic nature, for
example — if logic loses its conventional primacy over rhetoric. Then
the deconstructionist can deal with the works of philosophy as works of literature
and adapt the critique of metaphysics to the standards of a literary criticism
that does not misunderstand itself in a scientistic way. As soon as we take the
literary character of Nietzsche's writings seriously, the suitableness
of his critique of reason has to be assessed in accord with the standards of
rhetorical success and not those of logical consistency.
Some Relevant Textual Evidence:
Homer: The Odyssey (700-600 BCE)
ΟΔΥΣΣΕΙΑ
ΟΜΗΡΟΥ ΠΟΙΗΣΙΣ
Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς
μάλα πολλὰ
πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν
πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν·
πολλῶν δ' ἀνθρώπων
ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω·
πολλὰ δ' ὅ γ'
ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν
κατὰ θυμὸν,
[5] ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ
νόστον ἑταίρων.