Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 18:02:04 +0200
Subject: Re: The literal and the Symbolic


Cologne, 15 July 1998

Mike Staples schrieb:
> Is the distinction between the "literal" an the "symbolic" an outgrowth
> of subject/object metaphysics in that to say something is "literal" is
> to say that it points to one world,  while to say that it is symbolic is
> to say that it points to another world? Or maybe that is going too far
> afield and it would be better for me to ask simply if there there is a
> place for such a distinction (literal versus symbolic interpretations)
> in the work of Heidegger?

Heidegger says that there is metaphor only in metaphysics, something that 
shocked me when I first read it. 

The point is: How is a literal meaning to be tied down and demarcated from a 
metaphorical meaning? As long as language is conceived of as just a system of 
signs attached to impressions in the soul which are received from things (as in 
the Aristotelian conception and all metaphysics, with modifications, after 
Aristotle), there is a line of attachability of words to things. But if language 
is thought of as pointing to and calling beings into the open, this can happen 
in many ways, and there is no reason to privilege one calling over another, for 
all language reveals beings in some way or other. There is also no reason to 
privilege the substantive, i.e. the noun, over other parts of speech, since 
language does not have to be primarily a naming of substance (_hypokeimenon_). 
Perhaps adverbs are more attuned to the naming that language achieves since they 
point to a way of being, a mode and thus a mood. Why should language have a home 
position in literal meanings, even if these latter could be well defined? Why 
not allow language its free play as, say, James Joyce has done in “Finnegans 
Wake”? 

Symbolic interpretations, in turn, seem to be another sort of restriction of the 
free play of language. A symbol arises when two rings are made from one block 
and fit together perfectly; one ring then belongs “symbolically” to the other. A 
symbolic coding of pairs of meanings seems rather heavy-handed and unwarranted. 
Thus, for example, green is the colour of hope for Medieval Christianity, 
anything long is a symbol for the penis in psychoanalysis, a mandala is a symbol 
for unity and completeness in Jungian psychology, etc. An untrammelled play of 
language could point to more.


Michael
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