THE PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATION P. RICŒUR THE RULE OF METAPHOR. STUDY 8. METAPHOR AND PHILOSOPHICAL DISCOURSE

The second part of the chapter eight of the “Rule of Metaphor” deals with further philosophical implications of the metaphor. Ricoeur dissipates any suspicion of complicity between the metaphorical and metaphysical. He shows that it is due to a wrong understanding of the metaphor as embedded in nomination, while its proper place, as Ricoeur insists, is in discourse. The living metaphor is a principle animating thought and inciting it “to think more”. The very relationship between thought and poetry, between speculative and metaphorical discourses proves to be a dynamic process based on the dialectics between the poetical experience of belonging and the speculative power of distancing.