The power of metaphor: Notes on Kant, Nietzsche and de Man
According to Günther Anders, Kafka uses metaphors literally. Thus he succeeds in revealing the empirical reality to which the metaphors originally referred. By deconstructing Anders’s thesis the article shows that a literally reading of metaphors is, fundamentally, not possible. As far as literature is concerned this poses no problems, but for philosophy, which demands a rational language free of metaphors and capable of distinguishing abstracts meanings clearly, rhetoric proves to be of vital disturbance. Therefore one must first utilise the philosophical discourse, in order to explore the relation between metaphorical language and truth. In this respect Kant and Nietzsche serve as examples for the impossibility to establish a literal signification: Kant attempts to control the metaphorical diction of the language but fails; Nietzsche, on the other hand, accepts the power of metaphor and defines language as rhetoric. Finally, Paul de Man demonstrates that the line between literal and figural meaning is so obscure, that it is impossible to decide whether a word must be read literally or figuratively. As a conclusion this article suggests that the rhetorical nature of language forces the reader to enter into an infinite series of readings, without actually achieving a stable literarisation of the metaphor.

http://www.fu-berlin.de/phin/phin27/p27t4.htm

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