Mind, meaning and metaphor

The philosophy and psychology of metaphor in 19th-century Germany

Bibliographic Data

ID12221600
AuthorsBrigitte Nerlich (0000-0001-6617-7827, Nottingham University, UK,, corresponding author), David D Clarke (0000-0003-4003-0151, Action Analysis Group, at Nottingham University, UK)
Year2001
Volume14
Issue2
Pages39-61
Publication date2001-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory of the Human Sciences (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0952-6951 • E-ISSN: 1461-720X
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/09526950122120952
PMID18506949
OpenAlexW2055435308
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited23

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

Art · Epistemology · German · German philosophy · Linguistics · Literal and figurative language · Literature · Meaning (existential · Metaphor · Parallels · Rhetorical question · Classical Studies and Philology · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Philosophy

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