ABSTRACT
A history of metaphor is, in a sense, an ecology of metaphor. Metaphor's growth as a field of study became possible only in the middle of the last century with the appearance of conditions sufficient to establish a habitat. The epistemic urges of philosophy and metaphor found themselves co-creatively intertwined. Metaphor's emergence as a topic worthy of philosophical attention was dependent upon the cultivation of and philosophical contention with the idea of irreducible ambiguity. The engagement with metaphor by Hillman and other "imaginologists" unsettles the literal and transcendental claims of metaphysical systems. Metaphor is vexing because it requires of philosophy that it justify itself. It questions conceptual origins, intervening between the concept and its claim to primordiality. Metaphor maintains the modicum of undecideability, eschewing Cartesian first principles. A metaphorics is not a discourse of absolutisms, but of situated paradigms, each of which is to a greater or lesser degree therapeutic.
