Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor

by Mark Johnson

Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor was first published in 1981. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. "We are," says Mark Johnson, "in the midst of metaphormania." The past few years have seen an explosion of interest in metaphor as a vehicle for exploring the relations between language and thought. While a number of recent books have dealt with metaphor from the standpoints of several disciplines, there is no collection that shows the best of the work that has been done in the field of philosophy. Mark Johnson has brought together essays that define the central issues of the discussion in this field. His introductory essay offers a critical survey of historically influential treatments of figurative language (including those of Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, and Nietzsche) and sets forth the nature of various issues that have been of interest to philosophers. Thus, it provides a context in which to understand the motivations, influences, and significance of the collected essays. An annotated bibliography serves as a catalog of all relevant literature. Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor provides an entry point into the philosophical exploration of metaphor for students, philosophers, linguists, psychologists, artists, critics, or anyone interested in language and its relation to understanding and experience.

Paperback

First published October 1, 1981

About the author

Is a Knight Professor os Liberal Arts and Sciencesin the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon.

Mark Johnson was born in Kansas City, Missouri on May 24, 1949. He received his B.A. in Philosophy and English at the University of Kansas (1971) and his M.A. (1975) and Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Chicago (1977). He taught in the Philosophy Department at Southern Illinois from 1977 until 1994, and then moved to the Philosophy Department at the University of Oregon (1994-present). He is currently Professor of Philosophy and Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He is co-author, with George Lakoff, of Metaphors We Live By (Chicago, 2003) and Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (Basic, 1999). He is author of The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason (Chicago, 1987), Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics (1993), and The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding (2007). He also edited Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor (Minnesota, 1981). Johnson is author of numerous articles and book chapters on a broad range of topics including philosophy of language, metaphor theory, aesthetics, recent moral theory, ethical naturalism, philosophy and cognitive science, embodied cognition, philosophical psychology, and American pragmatist philosophy.

Reviews

[Jay Cowsill · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language," the final essay by George Lakoff and Mark John (286-325), is lucidly conceived and written. It argues that metaphor is a feature of thought rather than language and that many of the daily concepts by which we live are structured by it.