ABSTRACT
Metaphor and the senses are strangely linked in the history of epistemology.
As I demonstrate in Chapter 1, sensibility is brought to metaphor in order
to explain the objectivity of metaphor. Prompted by Ricoeur and Hausman,
my study of Heidegger’s Kant formulates objectivity as the subjective gen-
eration of a network of possibilities, where the notion of possibility qualifies
the way in which sensory intuition appears before consciousness. In Chapter
3, I argue that Locke’s arguments for the simplicity and separateness of the
senses belong to the same architectonic which stresses the importance of literal language. In contrast, Merleau-Ponty constructs an ontological fra-
mework which operates on the basis of transposition: synaesthetic coordi-
nation between the senses is presented as an aspect of the metaphorical,
jointed articulation through which the body schema creates and sustains
meaningful experience for a subject. And in my study of Kant’s aesthetics in
Chapter 2, while the senses are not explicitly considered, the relation between
subjective cognitive judgment and a world that is amenable to the ordering
exercised by judgment is shown, for Kant, to be metaphorical; the multiple associations generated by metaphor act as a buffer preventing the subjective
perception of order from being equated with the idealist notion of an
ordered or designed world. One philosopher not considered so far is
Nietzsche. This would seem to be a serious omission, given that he is the
first figure in Western philosophy to assert explicitly that the senses are
metaphorical (Nietzsche 2000). But this omission is only a temporary one,
as I examine his views on metaphor and the senses in the following chapter.
