Thursday, July 21, 2011

L75:

In a metaphor, a gesture that takes its life from one context is suddenly manifest as a gesture in a context in which we had not noticed its possibility before.

That is: there is what Wittgenstein would have called an internal relation between the two contexts.

L76:

The metaphor does not establish new internal relations; it shows us ones that were already there.

"The eyes are windows." What is created here is not a resemblance; rather, noticing the resemblance creates (among other things) a deeper appreciation of the peculiar relation of certain types of beings to their bodies. In understanding the metaphor, we see the body (mammalian, only?---avian, too, certainly; amphibian? reptilian?---icthyic? insectival?) as both transparent, and as an enclosure (a prison; a house). To say "window" invokes simultaneously intimacy and separation; to see, but not to touch. To say the eyes are windows explains the peculiar kind of emotional shock we can get when we meet another being's eyes. (This shock is perhaps less shocking if we are thoroughgoing dualists but, of course, such experiences may be among the reasons we incline to such an odd and notoriously problematic view.) The metaphor explains the shock, in part, because it leaves its mystery intact. For, clearly, the eyes aren't windows, they're eyes; the body isn't a house or a prison---there's no real estate market in incarnations, no wardens with offices and keys. The metaphor thus echoes the experience of struggling with illness: we are, and are not, our bodies. It moves us to the extent that in it we confront and allow ourselves to be puzzled by the shape of our mortality.

L77:

"The eyes are windows." This changes, among other things, the way we understand houses.

- from Jan Zwicky's Wisdom & Metaphor.




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