This article explores a German philosophy of metaphor, which proposed a close link between the body and the mind as the basis for metaphor, debunked the view that metaphor is just a decorative rhetorical device and questioned the distinction between the literal and the figurative. This philosophy of metaphor developed at the intersection between a reflection on language and thought and a reflection on the nature of beauty in aesthetics. Thinkers such as Giambattista Vico, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Jean Paul (...) and others laid the foundations for this philosophy and it was successively refined by Gustav Gerber, Alfred Biese and Friedrich Nietzsche. It influenced in its turn in various ways the linguistic study of metaphor and the psychology of metaphor as elaborated, for instance, by a lesser-known American scholar, Gertrude Buck. All these thinkers contributed to a philosophy and psychology of the metaphoric according to which metaphors are not only nice, but necessary for the structure and growth of human thought and language. Obvious parallels between this 19th-century philosophy of metaphor and the 20th-century theory of metaphor developed by Lakoff and his followers are examined throughout. (shrink)

Quid est veritas? Skeptical Implications of Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne. This paper aims to examine the reach of the question “Was ist also Wahrheit?” – which introduces the definition of truth given by Nietzsche in Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne (1873). The question has undoubtedly an analogy in the question with which Pilate responds to Jesus in the Gospel of John. Starting with an analysis of the direct and recognized sources of Nietzsche’s text, this contribution (...) shows how the Gospel background is, for Nietzsche, indirectly no less than directly, a crucial comparison that makes a decisive contribution to his conception of language. (shrink)

O artigo pretende discutir o sentido da ciência filosófica chamada “ontologia”, a doutrina do ente nele mesmo, a partir da crítica histórico-filosófica de Nietzsche à noção de verdade: na medida em que a “vontade de verdade” coloca a si mesma em questão e se pergunta pelo valor da verdade, não é só a “morte de Deus” e da moralidade cristã que finalmente têm lugar, a ideia mesma de uma doutrina do Ser cai por terra, entrando em seu lugar o conceito (...) de “interpretação”. Segundo essa leitura, a filosofia de Nietzsche é a um só tempo destino histórico e conceituação crítica desse destino. O artigo indica que se há uma tese ontológica na filosofia de Nietzsche — o mundo em si seria vontade de poder —, o sentido de “ontologia” aqui não é e não pode ser mais o sentido utilizado pela tradição metafísica. (shrink)

Continental philosophies of science tend to exemplify holistic themes connecting order and contingency, questions and answers, writers and readers, speakers and hearers. Such philosophies of science also tend to feature a fundamental emphasis on the historical and cultural situatedness of discourse as significant; relevance of mutual attunement of speaker and hearer; necessity of pre-linguistic cognition based in human engagement with a common socio-cultural historical world; role of narrative and metaphor as explanatory; sustained emphasis on understanding questioning; truth seen as horizonal, (...) aletheic, or perspectival; and a tolerance for paradoxical and complex forms of expression. Continental philosophy of science is thus more comprehensive than philosophy of science in the analytic tradition, including (and as analytic philosophy of science does not tend to include) perspectives on the history of science as well as the social and practical dimensions of scientific discovery. Where analytic philosophy is about reducing or, indeed, eliminating the perennial problems of philosophy, Continental philosophy is all about thinking and that will mean, as both Heidegger and Nietzsche emphasize, making such problems more not less problematic. (shrink)