The Metaphoric Spark

My next building block for a humanistic model of doing law is insight into metaphor. Seeing similarities and dissimilarities in a particular situation is what phronèsis and metaphorical insight hold in common. Ricoeur emphasises that ‘la métaphore vive’ or ‘the rule of metaphor’, when viewed as a combined process of cognition and imagination, is essential for judgement. It ties aspects of phronetic intelligence to ‘the semantic role of imagination (and by implication, feeling) in the establishment of metaphorical sense’. Here, too, Ricoeur turns to Aristotle, who denotes metaphor as, ‘the application of a word that belongs to another thing: either from genus to species, species to genus, species to species, or by analogy’. Ricoeur shares Aristotle's interest in the semantic gain of metaphor as a dynamic process: that is, ‘ “to metaphorize well” is “to see resemblance”’. Ricoeur argues for the assessment of the role of the imagination, for ‘it is in the work of resemblance that a pictorial or iconic moment is implied, as Aristotle suggests when he says that to make good metaphors is to contemplate similarities or … to have an insight into likeness’. Etymologically, μϵτα ϕϵρϵιν (meta pherein) means ‘to carry beyond’. In the figure of metaphor, this means beyond descriptive language.

Precisely because there is semantic gain in a successful metaphor, we should develop our ability to understand how resemblance works in the creation of meaning. The premise that insight into the metaphorical is essentially a contemplation of similarities leads not only to the requirement of insight into what is deemed a likeness but also, and more importantly, for what reasons. What matters then is the lexis of a text: that is, how something is said as compared to what is said (the logos of a text).

This distinction had already been made in Plato's Republic. Vico connected it to the bond linking poetry with law and jurisprudence. In Law and Literature, it is re-emphasised in the axis initiated on the basis of Cardozo's claim that legal professionals need to develop a linguistic antenna sensitive to peculiarities beyond the level of the signifier, because the form and content, the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ of a text, are interconnected.