ABSTRACT
In Nietzsche's psychological re-visioning of philosophy, metaphor was liberated from its exile at the metaphysical boundary. This chapter examines Nietzsche's influence largely as it is portrayed by Sarah Kofman, whose Nietzsche and Metaphor offers a poststructural account of the catalytic work of metaphor in Nietzsche's construal of subjectivity. Nietzsche's view that in the evident absence of ultimate truth, one might, paradoxically, draw constructive potential from the tragic sense of life had its influence in the work of Arthur Schopenhauer. The psychological inquiry is intrinsic to the engagement with metaphor. The philosophy of the concept, Nietzsche said, amounts to "the complete silencing of the personality". Metaphoric selection, soul-making, functions by the process of deferral and differentiation to cultivate Apollonian orientation from the masa confusa of Dionysian indifference. Nietzsche posited an Apollonian order that makes human existence possible and bearable, and a Dionysian sensorium on the other side of the conceptual veil.
