The real significance of metaphor: Lucian Blaga and Michael Polanyi

Abstract

Metaphors are taken to be ‘figures of speech’ which apply the terms for one known object to another. They can be used to show or argue that what applies to the one also applies to the second. But this ignores the Lucian Blaga’s important distinction between such ‘plastic’ metaphors and ‘revelatory’ ones which articulate for both the discoverer and for his audience something radically new for which there is no word. This relies upon our tacit powers, as shown by Piaget and articulated by Michael Polanyi, to adapt our present concepts, categories and language by using them as clues and attending from them and to what we sense that they point to and which cannot be ‘assimilated’ to them. A completely new word would articulate and convey nothing, but a word used as a revelatory metaphor can both open up a ‘mystery’ or ‘unknown unknown’ and reveal and convey something of it. The work of Blaga, Polanyi and Piaget on epistemology and language is used to explain, with examples, how this is possible and why it is important. Indeed, language grows by means of such metaphors which, if successful, then become ‘literal’ uses of the words used, and their metaphorical origins are forgotten. The proper understanding of metaphor may require some radical changes in our ideas of language and knowledge.