Metaphor
The Second Call: Flight (Batman III) — Jessica
from: CS Lewis, Limping Metaphors, and Groanings Too Deep For Words
What Barfield is saying here is that metaphors are not simply ‘poetic trappings,” but the foundation for all of human speech—but we have become so familiar with these metaphors (as well as historically removed from their original usages) that we cease to recognize them as such. Thus, we all rely on metaphors on a daily basis, although for the most part we remain ignorant of our great debt.
It is impossible to overstate how central metaphors are to the entirety of our lives, for all of human experience is shaped by metaphors. We humans are built in such a way that we make connections between the visible world of the senses and the invisible world of the spirit by the use of language; we are able to understand what we have not seen by the things which we have seen. Metaphors give flesh to that which is abstract. It is a shocking thing to realize that one cannot actually think without metaphors, for they are the very heart of meaning.
I strongly recommend following the link and reading the beautiful C.S. Lewis poem and Joshua Lelands’ reflection.
Wow.
Do you mind if I save that and use it on my desktop?
Ha! Thanks, Dennis! You are more than welcome to use it. : )
I’m not sure I agree about metaphor being the foundation for all human speech. From A Handbook to Literature, fifth edition, by C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon:
“The whole nature of our vocabulary is highly metaphorical. According to a fairly ingenuous notion of language, abstractions can be treated only in terms that are not abstract, presumably because the primitive mind cannot handle abstractions. But no evidence establishes the existence of any such limitations. To presume that any human being has to have a grasp of physical ‘pulling away’ (abs + trahere) before being able to grasp an ‘abstraction’ is little more than bigotry.”
Indeed, in Traditional Logic, Martin Cothran explains that “While a mental image is representative of something tangible and material (for example, it has shape and color), the simple apprehension is the grasp of something intangible and immaterial. A simple apprehension itself does not have shape or color; it is the act of understanding a universal meaning. When we have a simple apprehension of something — when, in other words, we understand it — we do not just get a glimpse of the sensible qualities of it, like its color and shape; we grasp the essence (or meaning) of the thing.”
When a young child is learning verbal communication, the child learns that a chair (for example) is that wooden thing he sits in at the table. But how is a child able to grasp the meaning of the word “love”? How is a child raised by atheist parents able to instinctively understand God? How is a child who is shown no tenderness by her parents able to instinctively know that God is a tender, loving father? In one of the posts I wrote last week, I quoted from Sofia Cavalletti’s Religious Potential of the Child, which is filled with such examples.
Your photo, Jessica, is much easier to respond to. It’s simply splendid.
I agree…I’m sure he was using a bit of hyperbole. However, (half in fun!) I will see your logic book quote and raise you one! In my daughter’s book, The Discovery of Deduction, they have Socrates and a student, Nate, involved in the following dialogue:
Think about the language acquisition of children. Doggy was one of the first words all of my kids learned and for a short while afterwards, every cat we met was “doggy.” That fits the whole “schema” theory of acquisition: our mind creates schema or categories and our experience helps us to fit new items into the correct category. Which isn’t to say that ALL things need to be experienced physically in order to be understood in the abstract. After all, “our hearts were made to love thee, o Lord, and they are restless until they rest in thee.”
But even Mr. Harmon agrees, our vocabulary is highly metaphorical. And our art certainly is. Shadow and light provide plenty of examples of that.