Metaphorical Musings: Navigating the Linguistic Labyrinth
Part IV: Ariadne’s Abandonment
Realising how long we’ve spent in these subterranean passages, we begin to fret: what if Ariadne felt the thread slacken? What if she’s lost faith in our quest and abandoned us to these shadowy corridors?
Shaking the unease with a boldness born of necessity or perhaps trust, we venture deeper still, trailing the steps of our Übermensch. Yet, instead of encountering the dreaded Minotaur, we are greeted by a more welcoming presence.
Nietzsche boisterously condemns the notion of an extra-linguistic first order reality, but Jacques Derrida takes a more precise approach in his work White Mythology. Derrida starts by asking crucial questions: ‘is there metaphor in the text of philosophy? in what form? to what extent? is it necessary or incidental?’ (Derrida 6). He introduces a trope in White Mythology that serves as a bridge from Nietzsche’s ideas. Derrida observes how the metaphorical process is often described through the paradigm of coinage (14), a motif that Nietzsche himself employs: ‘truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions; worn-out metaphors which have become powerless to affect the senses; coins which have their obverse effaced and now are no longer of account as coins’ (On Truth and Falsity 180). Derrida highlights variations of this coinage trope in the works of Karl Marx, Ferdinand De Saussure, and Anatole France. In White Mythology, he provides an elaborate example from Anatole France’s The Garden of Epicurus (this is a seperate edition to Derrida’s), where the character Polyphilos refers to philosophers as ‘needy knife-grinders’ by whose activity
words are changed from a physical to a metaphorical acceptation. It is obvious that they lose in the process….The primitive meaning, the original figure, always sensible and material is not exactly a metaphor. It is a kind of transparent figure, equivalent to a proper meaning. It becomes metaphor when put in circulation in philosophical discourse (White Mythology 8).
Once more, the debate over where language ends and the realm of its references begins, the ‘physical’, is at the forefront. However, for Polyphilos and the second genealogy in general, the link between mind and world is mediated by a linguistic object, a metaphor, rather than a cognitive one like an idea, as seen in the first genealogy. Polyphilos suggests that ‘if the primitive and concrete meaning that lurks invisible yet present under the abstract and new interpretation were brought to light, we should come upon some very curious and perhaps instructive ideas’ (Quoted in Derrida 8). Just as Nietzsche accused philosophers of blindness, Polyphilos insists that truth is ‘invisible’ and must be ‘brought to light’ — both employing visual metaphors to defend metaphor itself. Polyphilos views philosophy as a structure without foundation; to derive any utility from it, one must delve into the primitive origins of its metaphors, where ‘instructive ideas’ may be discovered.
The coin motif flips the first genealogy’s relationship between the figurative and the literal on its head. In this perspective, efforts to cleanse philosophical discourse of figurative language, like those of Hobbes or Locke, overlook the fact that every term in their vocabularies once bore metaphorical ‘faces’, eventually worn away by constant use. The ‘face’ is the marking that gives a coin its value in a specific time and place. A coin is affiliated with a state, featuring a particular date and inscription, all indicating some arbitrary worth.
Similarly, according to Polyphilos’ interpretation of the coin motif, a word’s ‘face’ is its tangible, physical origin validated by sensory experience. Through prolonged use, the tangible origin of a word erodes when it’s absorbed into metaphysical discourse, and the coin/word takes on a timeless value (for example, physical words like ‘spirit’, meaning breath, transform into metaphysical concepts, like Hegel’s ‘spirit’, meaning the progressively self-actualising freedom of reflexivity). As illustrated in the first genealogy, a non-temporal idea becomes the value of the word, the first-order reality. The process of ‘carrying-over’ from the original realm (the physical) to the conceptual (the metaphysical) through metaphor is suppressed and treated as an embarrassment: proponents of the first genealogy, from Aristotle to Davidson, uphold the superiority of the mind’s vision over that of the eye.
Derrida’s essay takes its title from a second metaphor: ‘white mythology’ refers to a ‘metaphysics which has effaced in itself that fabulous scene which brought it into being, and which yet remains, active and stirring, inscribed in white ink, an invisible drawing covered over in the palimpsest’ (11; emphasis added). In this context, Socrates creates the schemata of the intelligible region (truth/reason/mind) by importing the modal relationships from the visible realm (sun/light/eye). Over time, what was originally associated solely with the physical sense of sight is repurposed to define the invisible — the conceptual or intelligible — yet this transfer is then ignored, treated as though it never occurred; it’s like white ink. Similar to the coin metaphor, white mythology is a mimetic, direct metaphysics layered over the erasure of its own indirect figuration. Others in the second genealogy also argue that philosophers who denounce the use of tropes, such as metaphor, actually rely on hidden metaphors.
While those who explore the coin and palimpsest motifs alongside Derrida share a genealogy, he challenges one premise that he believes goes too far: the idea that metaphor is independent of and predates philosophy. Among those who criticise the division of philosophy through the coinage motif, such as Polyphilos, there’s a common assumption ‘that at its origins language could have been purely sensory, and that the etymon of a primitive meaning, though hidden, can always be determined… this etymologism interprets degradation as the passage from the physical to the metaphysical’ (‘White Mythology’ 8). As we’ve seen, the coin/palimpsest motif suggests that human knowledge is inherently metaphorical before it becomes metaphysical. While Locke argues against those who forsake the sensible for obscure abstractions, he also contends that literal language provides greater proximity to the true world. Once again, we can see how the coinage motif inverts this argument by suggesting that philosophical discourse relies wholly on original metaphorical transfers.
However, Derrida disagrees with the notion that all philosophy is metaphorical, pointing out that metaphor ‘remains in all its essential features a classical element of philosophy, a metaphysical concept’ (18). He maintains an undefined boundary between figuration and philosophy, arguing that each can only be formulated in reciprocal relationship to the other: neither the conceptual nor the metaphoric is subordinate or the original source of the other. Before delving further, let’s briefly say farewell to our Übermensch, whose arguments follow the coin motif and anticipate Derrida’s.
Nietzsche too offers a clear example of the coinage motif, but his approach avoids the main issue highlighted by Derrida because he doesn’t assert a clear boundary between literal (direct language) and figurative (indirect language). It’s challenging to pinpoint a ‘language function’ in Nietzsche’s writings because they lack a systematic structure. Unlike other texts we’ve examined, which place metaphor within a broader system of non-metaphoric language, Nietzsche states that all language use involves metaphorical transference:
The “Thing-in-itself” (it is just this which would be the pure ineffective truth) is also quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and not worth making any great endeavour to obtain. He designates only the relations of things to men and for their expression he calls to his help the most daring metaphors. A nerve-stimulus, first transformed into a percept! First metaphor! The percept again copied into a sound! Second metaphor! And each time he leaps completely out of one sphere right into the midst of an entirely different one (On Truth and Falsity 178).
Derrida further delves into Nietzsche’s arguments, emphasising the indefinite nature of supposedly definite origins, a characteristic shared by all of the first genealogy proponents. For Derrida, the question not only concerns the reliance of philosophy on metaphor, but also the dependence of metaphor on philosophy. Nietzsche’s exploration of origins oscillates between seemingly contradictory poles: on one side is the concept as metaphor, while on the other is the concept of metaphor itself. The narrative of white mythology/coinage, marked by the loss or forgetting of original meaning, shares at least one similarity with the first genealogy it critiques — that is, the perceived stability and ease of identifying the physical, primitive meaning by its properties.
As we bid farewell, we come to realise we no longer need an Übermensch to guard us in the shadows. Instead, our latest companion gestures towards the scarred walls not as warnings, but as testaments to trauma. Like us, Asterius is subject to the whims of the gods. Once more, our thoughts drift to sweet Ariadne above ground. We begin to sense that perhaps we are the ones left behind, or even deserted. Regardless, we press forward, drawn by the calm demeanour of our newest friend Derrida.
Polyphilos, akin to Locke, remains within the scope of Nietzsche’s criticism, as he seeks a stable, extra-linguistic origin for instruction — what he terms the physical. Derrida discusses the possibility or impossibility of bridging the gap Nietzsche pointed to: the indeterminacy of the first metaphor. According to Derrida, the assertion that all philosophy is metaphorical fails to explain the origin of metaphor, which remains a ‘classical element of philosophy’ (18). In contemporary usage, the concept of metaphor depends in part on Aristotle’s Poetics and the philosophical tradition in general; it appears to us as part of a philosophical system of concepts. Derrida clarifies that he doesn’t claim the concept of metaphor ultimately depends on Aristotle as an individual, as he neither invented ‘the word metaphor, nor the concept of metaphor… [but] he seems to have put forward the first systematic placing of it, a placing at any rate which survived as the first, and had the most profound historical consequences’ (18). The construction of the concept of metaphor occurs within the Aristotelian system and was passed on to subsequent philosophical texts that claim the tradition — it cannot be dealt with separately from that tradition.
In any philosophical system, a crucial relationship between being and language, or what we might term a ‘language function’, forms the foundation. We’ve explored several such systems in our examination of philosophies of metaphor. Derrida contends that the concept of metaphor (distinct from individual metaphors) cannot be detached from its relations within the system and claimed to encompass the entirety of it: it ‘self-eliminates every time one of its products vainly attempts to include under its sway the whole of the field to which that product belongs’ (Derrida 18). Here, the ‘product’ in question is the concept of metaphor and the physical origin that the coinage motif seemingly takes at face value.
In narratives where metaphor is posited as the basis for all metaphysics, as in the case of Polyphilos, there’s an anachronistic presumption of a concept of metaphor as though it’s not itself metaphysical. Yet, there’s no physical entity as a ‘concept of metaphor’ or metaphor in general outside of a metaphysical vocabulary. Derrida defends his assertion as follows:
If we wanted to conceive and classify all the metaphorical possibilities of philosophy, there would always be at least one metaphor which would be excluded and remain outside the system: that one, at least, which was needed to construct the concept of metaphor, or, to cut the argument short, the metaphor of metaphor (18).
A metaphoric origin of philosophy, whether it’s a nerve stimulus or any other notion, can’t be fully understood through metaphor unless metaphor itself has already been defined within a larger network of concepts. In critiquing the coin motif, Derrida isn’t simply reaffirming the tenets of the metaphysical tradition, because ‘even the signs (words or concepts) which make up this proposition… have their metaphorical charge. Concept is a metaphor… and there is no meta-metaphor for [it]’ (23; emphasis added). (In the following sections of White Mythology, Derrida goes on to demonstrate the concept is a metaphor argument through an interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of metaphor from the Poetics). This irreducible paradox demands acknowledgment: Defining the ‘concept of metaphor’ requires the ‘metaphor of concept’, and vice versa, and this reciprocal paradox regresses infinitely. Therefore, a complete division between philosophy and metaphor isn’t achievable. Derrida continues:
The general taxonomy of metaphors — of what are called philosophical metaphors in particular — thus presupposes a solution to important problems, and first of all to problems which actually generate the whole of philosophy and its history. Any ‘metaphorology’ would therefore be derivative with regard to the discourse over which it would claim ascendancy (28).
Neither philosophy nor figuration can be relegated to a secondary role because each category defines its domain with the hidden presence of the other. Consequently, they cannot be fundamentally distinguished from one another.
The first genealogy condemns metaphor as an indirect use of language, suggesting it’s inferior to direct usage in conveying knowledge or truth. Direct correspondence, according to this view, aligns with nature itself or stable concepts that represent their referents accurately. In contrast, the second genealogy critiques this view. It argues that direct correspondence is illusory, overlooking the inherent indirect origins of language — that all language is essentially metaphorical from the start. Thinkers like Kant, Nietzsche, and France’s Polyphilos suggest that the poetic imagination gives meaning to language by drawing on nature in an innate but indirect manner, rather than a direct cognitive one.
To varying degrees, the second genealogy flips the figurative/literal hierarchy. Primitive meanings are esteemed above cognitive abstractions, as they are more faithful to the function of language. Nature, in this perspective, remains a source of intuition and creativity, but the line between them is irreducibly indefinite.
Derrida, in particular, aims to show the impossibility of maintaining a clear division between the figurative and non-figurative, as each requires the other for definition. Drawing from Nietzsche’s idea of the language function, where even nerve stimuli are linguistically comprehensible rather than purely external causes, Derrida illustrates the impossibility of separating reality from language in discourse. There are no ultimate or foundational metaphors, as the process itself is one of continuous metaphorical expression.
Oh, weary traveller, I’m grateful for your company on this journey. Without any malice, I now leave you to chart your own course out of this labyrinth. But fear not, for Asterius poses no threat — the legendary beast is but a fading memory. All that remains is the sorrowful spectre of what once roamed these halls, now a gentle whisper in the darkness, guiding your steps. As you wander, let the scars of his frustration etched into these walls be not warnings, but rather, anchors to guide you. Soon, your eyes will adjust, and Ariadne’s thread, once a lifeline, now worn and frayed, will be found. For your sake, I hope it never is. She has long since been swept away into the arms of a god. And besides, spectres deserve friends too.
Harry Shakespeare-Davies is a final year PPE student, aspiring academic, and Statecraft VP.
I would like to once again express my heartfelt gratitude to Daniel Quill for going above and beyond in assisting with the additional task of reviewing this article. Despite your already demanding schedule, your willingness to lend your expertise is incredibly generous and speaks volumes about your character. Your support not only helps me improve this article but also motivates me to strive for excellence. Thank you sincerely for your invaluable contribution.
