“The metaphoricity of metaphor and the conceptuality of the concept …”

– Derrida, Jacques. Life Death (The Seminars of Jacques Derrida) (p. 68).

INTRODUCTION

“Metaphor” means transporting something from one domain to another, such as when I say “he’s a cold blooded killer” or “she’s boiling mad,” I am transporting descriptions from the physical world to the mental world.  We speak of a “stream of consciousness” for instance.  Psychologist Harry Hunt has noted that our language for describing the mental originally came from the physical (e.g., wind), and this seems to be at the core of our being, such as when a baby mirrors the facial expressions of the mother.

In order to understand the importance of metaphors for understanding categories/concepts, we need to go back to the Greeks who first systematized concepts/conceptual thinking.  Basic to understanding this is that the Greeks experienced a very serious separation between the realm of transitory thing and the wandering from distraction to distraction of the masses (think of the restless shade in the realm of the dead), and the realm of the eternal and peace/rest of the thinker.  In a letter to Overbeck Nietzsche talks about the severe cabin fever of his friends at a rainy cabin where he delighted in writing his Untimely Meditation.  Aristotle in the Politics notes only a beast or a god is at-home in solitude and called thinkers and the contemplative life the highest form of human existence, godliness (athanatizein/deathlessness).  Fink comments on Heraclitus fragment 29 that “the noble minded prefer one thing rather than all else, namely everlasting glory rather than transient things. The comportment of the noble minded is opposed to that of the polloi, the many [people], who lie there like well-fed cattle … (HS, 22-3).”  The masses drift from one distraction to the next because there is what the ancients called a “horror loci” to life, a revulsion at where one is, whereas Philosophy cultivates a “calm mind.”  Heidegger comments that

Aristotle, Plato’s disciple, relates at one place (Nicomachean Ethics, Z 7, 1141b 77ff ) the basic conception determining the Greek view on the essence of the thinker: ‘It is said they (the thinkers) indeed know things that are excessive, and thus astounding, and thereby difficult, and hence in general ‘demonic (daimonia)’ – but also useless, for they are not seeking what is, according to the straightforward popular opinion, good for man.’ … The Greeks, to whom we owe the essence and name of ‘philosophy’ and of the ‘philosopher,’ already knew quite well that thinkers are not ‘close to life.’ But only the Greeks concluded from this lack of closeness to life that the thinkers are then the most necessary -precisely in view of the essential misery of man (P, 100)

So, we may conclude here there were two distinct realms for the Greeks in the philosophical age: the realm of the ever-youthful ambrosia eating gods, and as Holderlin put it the restless realm of man who are destined/fated to go from the absorption of youth to the listless tedium of old age.  Plato, and especially Aristotle carried over the average everyday language of the Greeks into philosophical concepts, which is another way of saying Aristotle’s categories/concepts were metaphorical.  This way was paved by Platonic metaphysics that the particular thing was not nothing (ouk on) but deficient (me on) with respect to the primary image (meta-physics).  The particular house shows an aspect of houseness, for instance, but not the whole of what houseness is as such. 

As Kant noted, Aristotle first systematized the categories but simply carried them over from everyday language and experience from how he “rhapsodically found them.  This was possible due to the polysemy of “Truth” as a vehicle.  Truth is said in many ways, and the usual way has it substitute the copula “is” with “it is true that,” and so if I say “the dog is brown,” this is another way of saying “it is true that the dog is brown.”  Analogously, just as there are levels of Being (the mansion is houseness incarnate (somewhat analogous to “alethos on” in Plotinus, or Aristotle’s ousia: the proper and ownmost sense of houseness); houseness is merely present in the average house; is deficient in the dilapidated shack), there are levels of truth (The great ‘truths” of the human condition; a true friend; truth as certainty, free from doubt; it is true or correct the dog is brown). In other words, there is a true (genuine/exemplary) friend; a mere friend (it is true we are friends); and a deficient/bad friend. 

In ancient Greek, the primary word for “truth” is ἀλήθεια (alētheia), which etymologically derives from “a-” (not) and “lēthē” (forgetfulness or concealment), thus conveying the idea of “unconcealment” or revealing what is hidden. For example, you may be hard at work on a problem when suddenly it comes to you / is revealed. However, aletheia can sometimes overlap in meaning with notions of correctness, exactness, or verification in certain contexts. The word for “correct” or “right” (as an adjective) in Greek is more directly ὀρθός (orthos), meaning straight, upright, just, or accurate. The related abstract noun for “correctness” or “rectitude” is ὀρθότης (orthotēs). This distinction becomes particularly relevant in philosophical discussions, especially in Martin Heidegger’s work. He argues that the ancient Greek concept of truth originally emphasized aletheia as unconcealment, but shifted in Plato’s philosophy toward orthotēs as “correctness” or correspondence between statements and reality. Orthotēs represents the idea of “correctness” as distinct from (or an evolution of) aletheia’s broader sense of truth.  This was later fulfilled in the Christian tradition from Thomas to Luther that informed Descartes where the paradigmatic sense of truth became correctness and was amplified as certainty/freedom from doubt because what had to be certain/free from doubt was the salvation of the soul.  Kierkegaard notes this inconspicuously infused anxiety into the western tradition because one’s basic disposition/stance toward life was securing against doubt.

When I note that Aristotle’s basic concepts/categories are metaphorically carried over/translated from what he found in everyday language usage, translated, I am inquiring into the metaphoricity of the metaphor and the conceptuality of the concept too.  This is like asking about the animality of the animal or the humanity of the human, what is most “proper” or ownmost to them.  This is where Aristotle gets his word for Being from: ousia.

 Plato first uses the word ousia for Being indirectly when he talks about something that goes beyond our appropriating disposition toward the world, like how the traditional definition of marriage tramples LGBTQ rights.  These rights are beyond being (epeikene tes ousias) that elicit wonder since they can’t be appropriated (thaumazein) and hence is the birthplace of philosophy deconstructing and tentatively reconstructing our guiding disposition.  Aristotle was the first one to adopt the term ousia as a philosophical term. The ordinary meaning of this word is “house and home, holdings, financial means; we might also say ‘present assets,”property,’ what lies present [at hand].” (Heidegger PA, Phusis, 199)  

For the Greeks, Aristotle’s technical term ousia meant, in everyday parlance, that which was at hand, “[t]he Being of beings obviously is understood here as permanence and constancy. What projection is to be found in this understanding of Being? The projection upon time … [A]uthentic being comes to be understood as ousia, parousia in a sense which basically means the ‘estate’ [Anwesen], the immediate and always present [gegenwartigen] possession, the ‘property.'” (Heidegger, KPM, 164; also IM, 61).  So, for example, beauty that is present in the beautiful thing (Phaedo), neither was not nor will be not bust simply is, and if we are in dispute about whether the picture is beautiful we examine it at-hand and discuss it.

This word “property” is etymologically related to the word “proper.”  Someone’s property what is most proper to them. Likewise, “own” as in “I own the house” is etymologically related to the word “ownmost”  This would agree with asking after the “Being” of the house – what is most proper and ownmost to it?  “Property” and “proper” are etymologically related. Both derive from the Latin proprius, meaning “one’s own” or “particular to oneself.” “Proper” entered English around 1300 via Old French propre, carrying senses like “fitting,” “apt,” or “belonging specifically to something.” “Property,” meanwhile, comes from Latin proprietas (the quality or state of being proprius), which by the 1300s in English referred to ownership or possessions—what is distinctly one’s own.

In that sense, someone’s property can indeed be understood as what is most “proper” to them, aligning with the idea of exclusivity or inherent belonging.  As for “own” (as in possession) and “ownmost,” they are connected in English usage, though “ownmost” is a more specialized term. “Own” traces back to Old English āgan (to possess or have), from Proto-Germanic aiganan, emphasizing control or belonging.  “Ownmost” is essentially “own” compounded with the superlative “-most,” meaning “most one’s own” or “most inherent.” Ownmost is not a common everyday word but appears in philosophical contexts, particularly in English translations of Martin Heidegger’s work, where it renders the German eigenste (most proper or authentic to oneself).

Property/Proper and Own/Ownmost share a root in the concept of possession or self-belonging.  Regarding Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle’s ousia, in ancient Greek, ousia (from the feminine participle of einai, “to be”) originally carried everyday meanings like “property,” “estate,” or “possessions”—what belongs immediately to a person or is at their disposal.  Aristotle repurposed it philosophically in works like the Metaphysics and Categories to denote “substance” or “essence”—the fundamental “being” of a thing. Heidegger, in texts like Being and Time, highlights this shift, arguing that the original sense of ousia as “what is one’s own” or “at hand” reveals a more primordial understanding of Being, tied to presence and availability rather than abstract substance. Inquiring into the “Being” of the house means asking after what is most proper (proprius) or ownmost (eigenste) to it—its essential, inherent reality. Heidegger critiques later translations (e.g., to Latin substantia, meaning “standing under”) for obscuring this originary link to everyday “belonging.”

Similarly, Hupokeimenon is the Greek philosophical term for substance, hypokeimenon as an underlying basis in philosophy which include: Aristotle’s bronze statue: The bronze is the hypokeimenon (material substratum) that persists while the form changes from, say, a lump to a sculpted figure. It underlies the transformation without being altered in its essence. In Aristotle’s Categories, the individual substance (e.g., “this man”) is the hypokeimenon to which accidents like “pale” or “musical” are attributed. It’s the stable base for changeable properties.  In modern philosophy, John Locke posits an unknown “substratum” as the underlying bearer of observable qualities (e.g., the “something” that supports the redness and roundness of an apple), echoing hypokeimenon’s role as the persistent essence amid sensory changes. Spinoza’s single infinite substance underlies all modes and attributes, similar to how hypokeimenon serves as the foundational reality in Aristotelian terms.

Heidegger traces hypokeimenon back to a wider base with the verb.  Heidegger gives the example that during the war a report was given that an enemy fort had been taken.  The captain looked and indeed the fort was flying friendly colors.  It was a disaster though because the captain had misperceived that the flag was friendly and the fort was approached “as though” it was friendly, but it wasn’t.  The faulty report Heidegger says was the “hupokeimenon” for the false seeing.  The verb form, hypokeimai (“to lie under”), was common in classical Greek, often meaning to be situated beneath something, to be subject to (e.g., laws or fate), or even figuratively to imply or form the basis of an argument. The participial noun hypokeimenon could extend from this in educated or rhetorical contexts to mean “premise,” “foundation,” or “subject matter.”  It later influenced Latin “subiectum,” which evolved into the grammatical “subject” in logic and language

So, the verb form hypokeimai (ὑποκεῖμαι) predates Aristotle. It is a compound verb formed from hypo- (under) and keimai (to lie), with keimai itself appearing in much earlier texts like Homer’s Iliad (8th century BC). The verb hypokeimai is attested in classical Greek literature from the 5th and 4th centuries BC, including in works by authors like Herodotus (c. 484–425 BC), Thucydides (c. 460–400 BC), and Plato (c. 428–348 BC), who uses related forms in dialogues such as the Timaeus (around 360 BC). Aristotle (384–322 BC) popularized the participial noun hypokeimenon as a technical philosophical term in his Categories and Metaphysics, but the underlying verb was already in common use in everyday and literary Greek for meanings like “to lie under,” “to be subject to,” or “to be assumed.”

Aristotle took Plato’s metaphysical understanding of Being as the paradigmatic or exemplary and translated it into what is most proper or ownmost given that Aristotle took as fundamental the encounter of the person with being in the predicative or apophantic judgement, “taking something as something else:” the dog “as” brown, “as” it is in itself, etc.  So, in the Physics, Aristotle still had the “Now this is Nature” of the Eagle soaring,” he just thought it differently than Plato who talked about the exemplar appearing through the medium of the Idea of Beauty.

What Nietzsche noticed is this logic of the exemplary contained in itself its own dismantling because it implicated the person.  For example, we can have houseness incarnate in the mansion; merely present in the average house; and deficient in the dilapidated shack – but the next person may encounter the mansion “as” gawdy or the shack “as” quaint.  Similarly, Niagara Falls may appear as a wonder of the world to the tourist or as noise pollution to the tourist.  Nietzsche thus noted there is the doubling of phenomena that contain their own perversion.  Nietzsche gives the example of Darwin’s law of selection that realizes its own perversion that everywhere and at all times the weak and ugly subjugate the strong (like Socrates subjugates Alcibiades).  In this regard, metaphors and concepts are not prior to philosophy because we ask after their metaphoricity and conceptuality, what is proper or ownmost to them, and so presuppose philosophy as metaphysics from Plato to Nietzsche.  Nietzsche realized the “most proper” sense of something was a hollow idol. Derrida sees this as Nietzsche overcoming Greek exemplar metaphysics of the incarnate, which even goes back to Homer with the goddess appearing incarnate in the woman to Odysseus but his companion only sees here as a mere woman.  Derrida says this double of Nietzsche escapes the Greek idea of the exemplar and so “I know both, I am both” (Ich kenne beides, ich bin beides), not “I know them, I incarnate both of them.” (Derrida, Jacques. Life Death, 36).  Further, Derrida writes regarding the most proper and ownmost dismantled in Nietzsche’s philosophy: “Nietzsche distrust here every assurance regarding identity and everything we think we know about a proper name (Derrida, Life Death 30).

There is no reading for an overall “picture” of what we read in Nietzsche, as is most often done, but Derrida says to read in view of a meditatio generis futuri, a practical meditation that goes so far as to give itself the time for an effective destruction/reconstruction (42).  We have to give weight to the fact Nazism is a perversion of Nietzsche but one suggested by the text itself.  Analogously, a feminist or psychoanalytic or Marxist reading may destabilize an author’s intention (e.g., the unintended misogyny in a novel about marriage).  Derrida says

Because the effects of a text and the structure of a text, as we know in part thanks to Nietzsche, cannot be reduced to its truth or to the intentions of the presumed author—thus even if it were simply true that Nietzsche did not think or want this, that he would have vomited this, and that Nazism, far from being the regeneration called for by him, is only a symptom of the accelerated decomposition of culture and of European society diagnosed by Nietzsche, even in this case, it remains to be explained how reactive degeneration is able to make use of the same language, the same words, the same statements, the same rallying cries, as the active forces of which it is the real enemy… The “same” statement (or what passes for the same) says exactly the [71] contrary, corresponds exactly to the inverse, to the reactive inversion, for example, of what it mimes.  But one would still have to account for this possibility of inversion or of perversion that can make the same statement be taken for another, or another for the same. The possibility of this perverting simplification is to be found—so long as one refrains from distinguishing between unconscious programs and deliberate ones (recall what was said last week),47 so long as one no longer takes into account only intention in reading a text—in the very structure of the text, and this must be something we are able to read. (Derrida, Life Death, 45-6).

Interpretations are not correct or incorrect but exist on a spectrum between left and right poles

Interpretations are not hermeneutics of reading but political interventions in the political rewriting of the text. This has always been the case, but especially so since what is called the end of philosophy, since the textual indicator named Hegel. It is not an accident but an effect of the structure of all post-Hegelian texts that there can always be a right and a left Hegelianism, a right and a left Heideggerianism, a right and a left Nietzscheism, and even, we must not forget, a Marxism of the right and a Marxism of the left. Is there something in Nietzsche that can help us—and help us in a specific way—to understand this political structure of the text and of interpretation? That is the question that would need to be elaborated. Does Nietzsche offer us anything to understand the double interpretation and perversion of his text? (Derrida, Life Death, 47)

Suppose as a philosophy student you had a debate with another philosophy student about whether there are innate ideas, in front of a crowd of 500.  The crowd is all philosophy students, except for one philosophy professor.  After the debate, a poll of the audience is done and an overwhelming 99% of the audience thinks you won.  The philosophy professor sided with your opponent.  Did you win the debate?

As Nietzsche noted, we are still haunted by the ghosts of a system of persuasion developed to legitimize and empower the lowest common denominator as revenge against the once powerful.  Rhetoric originally developed so people in ancient Greece could complain in front of an audience to get an audience to side with them, specifically to argue to get their land back from tyrants that had stolen it (look at what happened to me – how would you feel if it happened to you?):  Out of Will to Power choosing a guiding principle/context/disposition toward life of the “Golden Rule” rather than “Might Makes Right”.  Acting according to the Golden Rule is not correct or incorrect, but rather is one way of playing the game, as Might Makes Right is another way to play.  It is correct to move the knight so and so in chess because that reflects the rules/how the game is played.  Heraclitus thus says the Geschicke of Being is a child playing draughts.

The weak masses getting revenge on the tyrants illustrates an important point.  Nietzsche highlighted what he saw as a profound irony in Darwin’s theory of natural selection, arguing that empirical observation often shows the opposite: the weak, mediocre, or “sickly” prevailing over the strong, not through brute force but through numbers, cunning, and adaptive strategies.  In works like Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist, he critiqued Darwinism (or what he called “anti-Darwin”) by pointing out that life doesn’t consistently favor the “fittest” in the sense of the strongest or most noble; instead, the herd-like masses—the average or even sub-average—dominate because they are more numerous and intellectually resourceful when it comes to survival.

For instance, he wrote: “Species do not grow more perfect: the weaker dominate the strong again and again—the reason being they are the great majority, and they are also cleverer. Darwin forgot the mind (—that is English!): the weak possess more mind.”

This isn’t a outright rejection of evolution but a challenge to its optimistic interpretation as “progress” toward higher forms; Nietzsche saw it as often leading to stagnation or decline.

The connection to the origins of rhetoric is astute and fits neatly into Nietzsche’s broader critique of decadence and the “slave revolt in morality.” In ancient Greece (and Sicily), rhetoric emerged as a democratic tool for the dispossessed masses to reclaim property and power from tyrants—essentially, the “weak” (the many, the commoners) using persuasive speech to outmaneuver the “strong” (the few, the rulers) without direct violence.

Nietzsche would likely view this as an early symptom of the ressentiment-driven inversion he describes in On the Genealogy of Morality: the weak, resenting their powerlessness, don’t destroy the strong outright but subvert them by revaluing weakness as virtue (e.g., meekness, humility, equality, poverty) and strength as vice (e.g., tyranny, aristocracy, avarice).

Rhetoric, in this lens, becomes a weapon of the herd—a clever, mimetic tool that levels the playing field, allowing the masses to dominate through words, laws, and moral appeals rather than raw power. This ties into his notion of decadence: a cultural decay where noble, life-affirming values (will to power, hierarchy) are eroded by egalitarian, pity-based ideals that idealize poverty, suffering, and conformity as “good.”

Democracy itself, for Nietzsche, exemplifies this slave morality, prioritizing the collective weakness over individual excellence, much like how natural selection (per his irony) favors the adaptable mediocre over the exceptional strong.  In essence, the “revenge” —whether through rhetoric in antiquity or moral inversions in history—illustrates Nietzsche’s point: the weak don’t win by becoming strong but by making strength irrelevant or villainous, leading to a world where, as he put it, “the will to nonentity prevails over the will to life.”

The origins of rhetoric or persuasive speech trace specifically to the Greek colony of Syracuse in Sicily (part of the broader ancient Greek world) around the mid-5th century BCE. According to historical accounts, the systematic study of rhetoric began there after the overthrow of tyrants like Gelon, Hieron, and Thrasybulus, when democracy was restored and courts were established to handle disputes over property that had been confiscated under tyrannical rule.  Citizens needed to represent themselves in legal proceedings to reclaim their land from those who had acquired it during the tyranny, as there were no professional lawyers at the time.

This created a demand for persuasive speaking skills.  Two figures, Corax (often credited as the founder) and his student Tisias, developed the first formal techniques for rhetoric to help people argue effectively in these court cases.  Corax is said to have taught methods based on probability and common sense arguments, structuring speeches into parts like introduction, narrative, proof, and conclusion. From Sicily, these ideas spread to mainland Greece, influencing later thinkers like the Sophists, Plato, and Aristotle, who expanded rhetoric into a broader art of persuasion used in politics, education, and public discourse.

Key to such methodology are using examples and analogies.  Such techniques make positions vivid and so make them seem “credible,” though opposite sides can come up with equally compelling though mutually exclusive illustrative analogies, metaphors and examples (e.g., conservative vs liberal; pro life vs pro-choice; etc).  This ties into the politics of reading, say, of interpreting Nietzsche mentioned above. We still see the form in public debates where an audience of non-experts are polled to see who won: e.g., a jury – like randomly polling 12 non-experts on the street about how to fix your car. Criminal law is based on the idea of multiple perspectives and as in a chess game it is neither more beneficial or detrimental to view a case through a prosecution or defense lens, something birthed in junior level elementary debates: should there be school uniforms?  Should homework be banned at the elementary school level?  Likewise in contexts for interpretation, it’s not that a feminist lens is “better/more true” than a hermeneutic or Marxist or psychoanalytic lens.

Examples and analogies are powerful rhetorical tools because they make abstract ideas more relatable and vivid, bridging the gap between complex concepts and everyday understanding. However, they often serve more to illustrate a perspective than to provide objective proof or “weight” to one side of an argument. Let me break this down.

At their core, these devices are meant to demonstrate or clarify a point by drawing parallels or highlighting specific instances. For instance:

• In debates over school uniforms, proponents might analogize them to professional dress codes in workplaces, suggesting they foster discipline and equality. Opponents could counter with an analogy to prison uniforms, arguing they stifle individuality and creativity.
• On abortion, one side might use the example of a violinist hooked up to an unwilling host (from Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famous thought experiment) to illustrate bodily autonomy, while the other invokes the analogy of a parent neglecting a born child to emphasize responsibility.
• In conservative vs. liberal politics, conservatives might point to historical examples like the fall of Rome due to moral decay to warn against progressive policies, whereas liberals could cite the civil rights movement as an example of how change drives progress.

These aren’t just random; they’re chosen because they align with the arguer’s underlying values, assumptions, or goals. They help the audience see the point from that angle, but they don’t inherently validate it.

The reason both sides can muster compelling examples and analogies is that reality is multifaceted, and human experiences are diverse. Analogies, in particular, rely on selective similarities—ignoring differences that might undermine the comparison. This is known in logic as the “analogy fallacy” when overextended: no two situations are identical, so an analogy can always be critiqued or countered with another that flips the script.

Examples suffer from similar issues. They’re often anecdotal or cherry-picked, which means they can illustrate a trend but rarely represent the full picture. Statistical evidence or broader data might lend actual weight, but a single example (or even a handful) doesn’t. As the saying goes, “the plural of anecdote is not data.” This selectivity allows debaters to frame narratives that support their view without necessarily engaging with counter-evidence.

Do They Add Weight?  In short, no—not in the sense of providing decisive, objective support. They illustrate a point of view effectively, making it more persuasive or memorable, but they don’t prove it. True argumentative weight comes from:

• Logical consistency: Does the argument hold up under scrutiny without relying on the analogy?
• Empirical evidence: Data, studies, or verifiable facts that go beyond isolated examples.
• Ethical or philosophical grounding: Core principles that aren’t analogy-dependent.

That said, examples and analogies aren’t useless; they’re essential for communication. In fields like education, law, or science, they help explain ideas (e.g., Schrödinger’s cat for quantum mechanics), but experts know to treat them as starting points, not endpoints. The key is to recognize when they’re being used manipulatively—such as in polarized debates where emotional appeal trumps reason.  If both sides rely heavily on them without deeper substantiation, it might indicate the issue is more about values or worldview than provable facts. In those cases, the “weight” shifts to empathy, dialogue, or compromise rather than winning through illustration alone.

Rhetoric is thus often sleight of hand, claiming added weight to a claim when there is none.  And, it points to a further degradation of values in ancient Athens.  The relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades, as depicted in ancient sources like Plato’s Symposium, can indeed be interpreted as an example aligning with Nietzsche’s critique of how “the rabble” subordinates the strong through dialectics and inverted values.  Ancient accounts (e.g., from Plato and Xenophon) describe Socrates as physically ugly—short, stout, with a snub nose, bulging eyes, and a potbelly—often portraying him as a plebeian figure from humble origins. He wasn’t a warrior or aristocrat but a stonemason’s son who relied on intellectual prowess and dialectical questioning to engage (and often humble) others. Nietzsche explicitly latches onto this ugliness as a symbol of decadence and lower-class resentment.

In contrast, Alcibiades was the epitome of Athenian nobility—stunningly handsome, wealthy, charismatic, a skilled general and politician from a prestigious family (related to Pericles). He embodied the “strong” in a classical Greek sense: physical beauty, ambition, and a life of action, excess, and conquest.  It wasn’t a straightforward “romantic” affair in the modern sense but a complex mentor-pupil dynamic with erotic undertones, typical of ancient Greek pederasty. In the Symposium, Alcibiades drunkenly recounts pursuing Socrates sexually, offering his beauty and body in exchange for wisdom, only for Socrates to rebuff him with ironic self-control. Socrates uses dialogue and virtue to “tame” Alcibiades’ wild impulses, influencing him profoundly (though Alcibiades later betrays Athens). This inversion—where the ugly, “weak” elder intellectually dominates the beautiful, powerful youth—highlights a power shift away from raw strength toward rational restraint.

Nietzsche, particularly in Twilight of the Idols (1889), uses Socrates as a prime symbol of how the “rabble” (the weak, resentful masses) overthrows the noble and strong. In the section “The Problem of Socrates,” Nietzsche argues that Socrates’ ugliness reflects his plebeian roots and inner decadence: “Ugliness is often enough the expression of a development that has been crossed, thwarted by crossing.” He sees Socrates as embodying ressentiment (resentment), using dialectics as a weapon to make the strong doubt themselves.

Crucially, Nietzsche states: “With dialectics the rabble gets on top.” Socrates’ method—endless questioning that exposes inconsistencies—forces the aristocratic, instinctive elite (like Alcibiades) to submit to reason, inverting natural hierarchies. Beauty, strength, and nobility become subordinated to “virtue” and self-denial, which Nietzsche views as a slave morality triumphing over master morality.

This ties into Nietzsche’s broader Genealogy of Morals (1887), where the weak (priests, philosophers like Socrates/Plato) create values that vilify the strong’s natural vitality, promoting asceticism and guilt. Alcibiades’ failed seduction and subsequent admiration for Socrates exemplify this: the “strong” warrior is humbled, his desires redirected, by the “rabble’s” intellectual trap.

Alcibiades, the aristocratic ideal, chases Socrates and ends up praising his superiority in endurance and wisdom (e.g., Socrates’ unflappable calm in battle or temptation). This isn’t physical conquest but a psychological one—the ugly “rabble” figure asserts dominance, making the strong feel inferior or indebted. Nietzsche would likely see this as dialectics in action: Socrates doesn’t win through beauty or power but by making Alcibiades question his own values.

The contrast amplifies Nietzsche’s point. Alcibiades represents the pre-Socratic Greek nobility (Dionysian vitality), while Socrates heralds the rationalist decay that Nietzsche blames for weakening Western culture. Their “romantic” interplay underscores how the weak can “seduce” and control the strong without force, aligning with Nietzsche’s warning about ressentiment.

Nietzsche doesn’t directly reference Alcibiades in this context (his focus is broader on Socrates vs. the nobles), but the Symposium anecdote vividly illustrates his critique. Interpretations vary—some see it as genuine mentorship, not subversion—but through a Nietzschean lens, it’s a clear case of value inversion.  Nietzsche wanted to stress the doubling how he had Socrates’ decadence but also overcame it:

“My readers know perhaps in what way I consider dialectic as a symptom of décadence (als Décadence-Symptom); for example in the most famous case [and “case” here is Fall, case as indicating fall, casus, decadence, im allerberühmtesten Fall: im Fall des Sokrates].”24 And further on still: “Apart from the fact that I am a décadent, I am also the opposite (dass ich ein décadent bin, bin ich auch dessen Gegensatz).”  (Derrida, Life Death, 37).

Metaphors And Concepts

Science often wants to keep a strict border between metaphor and concept. But what is the metaphoricity of metaphor and the conceptuality of the concept? Are they simply opposites, or do they represent two different halves of a spectrum. Do metaphors help us explain what concepts struggle with (“I’m burning mad;” Plato’s allegory of the cave; etc)?

Metaphors and concepts are indeed often treated as distinct in scientific and philosophical discourse, with science prioritizing precise, literal concepts to build testable models and avoid ambiguity.

• The metaphoricity of metaphor: A metaphor is fundamentally a figure of speech or thought that transfers meaning from one domain to another, often by analogy or resemblance (e.g., “time is a thief”). Its “metaphoricity” lies in its inherent fluidity and creativity—it’s not just a tool but a process that’s self-referential and layered. Metaphors can be metaphorical about themselves; for instance, we might say “metaphor is a bridge,” which itself uses a metaphor to describe metaphor’s connective role. This highlights its recursive nature: metaphors generate new meanings by blending unlike things, evoking imagery, emotion, or intuition rather than strict definition.
• The conceptuality of the concept: A concept, in contrast, is an abstract mental construct or category that organizes experience into stable, definable units (e.g., “gravity” as a force). Its “conceptuality” emphasizes clarity, universality, and logical structure—it’s meant to be precise, verifiable, and free from personal interpretation. Yet, concepts aren’t purely “conceptual” in isolation; they often emerge from or rely on underlying metaphors. For example, the concept of “argument” in logic is built on the metaphor of war (“attacking a position,” “defending a claim”), showing how even rigorous ideas carry metaphorical residues.

In essence, neither is purely what it seems: metaphors have a conceptual backbone (they rely on structured mappings between source and target domains), and concepts have metaphorical underpinnings (they abstract from lived, embodied experiences that are inherently analogical).  They aren’t simply opposites—like black and white—but more like complementary halves of a cognitive spectrum, where one shades into the other. This view aligns with thinkers in cognitive linguistics and philosophy:

• As opposites (the traditional view): In analytic philosophy or strict scientific methodology (e.g., logical positivism), metaphors are seen as ornamental or imprecise, potentially misleading in pursuit of truth. Concepts are the “real” building blocks: objective, literal, and falsifiable. Science enforces this border to maintain rigor—think of how physics discards anthropomorphic metaphors (e.g., “nature abhors a vacuum”) in favor of mathematical concepts.
• As a spectrum (the integrated view): Modern perspectives, such as those from George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By (1980), argue that human cognition is fundamentally metaphorical. Concepts aren’t born in a vacuum; they’re structured by metaphors drawn from bodily and cultural experiences (e.g., “up is good/down is bad” shapes concepts like “happiness” or “depression”). Over time, metaphors can “harden” into concepts: what starts as a vivid analogy (e.g., “electron cloud” in quantum mechanics) becomes a literal concept in scientific discourse. Conversely, concepts can be “softened” back into metaphors for communication or innovation.

This spectrum implies a dynamic relationship: metaphors provide the creative, intuitive end (exploring the unknown through familiarity), while concepts anchor the precise, systematic end (refining and testing those explorations). They’re interdependent, not adversarial—much like yin and yang, where each contains elements of the other.

Do Metaphors Help Explain What Concepts Struggle With?  Absolutely, and this is where their value shines, especially in domains where pure concepts fall short due to complexity, abstraction, or ineffability. Concepts excel at description and prediction but often lack the evocative power to convey experience or bridge gaps in understanding. As I said previously, the category of substance with properties was originally metaphorical when Philosophy carried it over from average everyday Greek use, and so is limited in usefulness, say, not really applicable at the quantum level as Rovelli demonstrates.  Metaphors fill this void by:

• Evoking emotions and sensory experiences: The example of “I’m burning mad” captures anger’s intensity in a way that a conceptual definition (“intense displeasure”) can’t. It draws on physical sensation (heat) to make the abstract emotional state visceral and relatable.
• Illuminating abstract ideas through narrative: Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is a prime case— it uses a story of prisoners mistaking shadows for reality to explain the concept of enlightenment and the Forms. The concept alone (e.g., “true knowledge transcends sensory illusion”) is dry and hard to grasp; the metaphor makes it memorable and intuitive, inviting readers to “see” the idea.
• Bridging gaps in science and philosophy: In fields like quantum physics, metaphors like “wave-particle duality” or “Schrödinger’s cat” help conceptualize paradoxes that defy everyday logic. They allow us to approximate what rigorous math describes but intuition struggles with. Similarly, in biology, “survival of the fittest” started as a metaphor but evolved into a core evolutionary concept, though it risks oversimplification if taken too literally.

However, this aid comes with caveats: metaphors can introduce biases or inaccuracies if not critically examined (e.g., the “war on cancer” frames disease as an enemy, potentially overlooking systemic factors). Science’s “strict border” is a safeguard against this, but blurring it productively—through “conceptual metaphors”—drives innovation, as seen in how Einstein used thought experiments (metaphorical scenarios) to develop relativity.

Metaphors and concepts form a continuum that enriches human thought. By embracing their overlap, we gain tools for both precision and creativity, explaining why poetry and science, despite their differences, both advance understanding.

Friedrich Nietzsche had a profound and influential perspective on metaphors, viewing them not as mere literary devices but as foundational to human language, thought, truth, and reality itself. His most direct and famous exploration of this comes from his 1873 essay “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” (also translated as “On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense”), where he critiques traditional notions of truth and argues that all knowledge is inherently metaphorical.

Nietzsche posits that human cognition begins with sensory experiences, which we translate into language through metaphors. We don’t directly access “reality” or “things in themselves”; instead, we create representations via bold analogies. For instance, he describes how language imposes human relations onto the world:

• “It is this way with all of us concerning language; we believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.”

He emphasizes that metaphors are not optional embellishments but the “fundamental human drive.” Without this drive to form metaphors, thought itself would be impossible: “The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought, for one would thereby dispense with man himself.”

Concepts, in turn, arise from “volatilizing” these perceptual metaphors into schemas, dissolving vivid images into abstract categories.  Nietzsche’s most iconic statement demystifies truth as something illusory and constructed:

• “What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.”

Here, truth isn’t objective correspondence to reality but a socially agreed-upon set of faded metaphors. Over time, these “illusions” harden into what societies treat as absolute, forgetting their origins in creative, human invention. This view influenced later thinkers, including cognitive linguists who see metaphor as structuring cognition. We saw this with Aristotle translating everyday ways of saying something about something found in Greek language into formal conceptuality.

Nietzsche warns that while metaphors enable understanding and survival (by allowing “dissimulation” or creative deception in a harsh world), they also conceal reality. Language simplifies and categorizes the unequal as equal, leading to distortions: “Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal.”  He contrasts this with art and myth, where metaphors retain their vitality, versus science and philosophy, where they ossify into rigid “truths.”  In his own writing, Nietzsche employed metaphors deliberately to avoid dogmatism and to provoke dynamic thinking—e.g., describing the intellect’s strength in “dissimulation” as a tool for the weak to survive, akin to animals without claws or fangs.

He saw metaphor as both creative (building worlds) and deceptive (hiding the flux of existence).  This ties into his critique of epistemology and religion: metaphors underpin religious concepts (e.g., anthropomorphisms like gods) and philosophical systems, revealing them as human constructs rather than divine truths. Sarah Kofman in Nietzsche and Metaphor argue that for Nietzsche, humans are “metaphorical animals,” with metaphor at the core of interpretation and self-creation.  His ideas prefigure modern theories in linguistics and cognitive science, where metaphors shape how we conceptualize abstract ideas (e.g., time as space).

As I said, Kant noted Aristotle just appropriated his philosophical categories/concepts from how he found them in everyday language, deriving his categories in a haphazard, unsystematic manner—essentially collecting them “rhapsodically” from how they presented themselves in experience or common predicates, without a guiding principle or deduction. This implies an appropriation from everyday linguistic or empirical usage, as Aristotle’s categories (e.g., substance, quantity, quality) are drawn from “things that are said” (ta legomena) in non-composite expressions, reflecting ordinary ways of predicating attributes: “Aristotle ‘had no principle’ in his search for categories, but ‘rounded them up as he stumbled on them.’”  Kant critiqued Aristotle’s list as “rhapsodic” and unsystematic, suggesting it was assembled without a guiding principle, essentially by observing common linguistic forms of judgment (e.g., “what,” “how much,” “of what sort”).

Aristotle’s categories reflect grammatical structures in Greek, such as how predicates attach to subjects, mirroring ordinary ways of speaking about things. Similarly, “alethos (truth)” in everyday Greek meant “truly,” “really,” or “genuinely,” as in honest speech or reliable actions (e.g., a woman described as “alethos” meaning careful or accurate).

The movement of dead ancient Philosophical language of the ancient Greeks into our living mother tongue is also translating/metaphor, the transporting over from dead language to living mother tongue.  But more originally, it was also metaphor of carrying over language from everyday Greek into philosophical Greek, and so Aristotle gathered his categories as he found predicates being used in everyday language and experience.  In Ancient Greek etymology, “metaphor” is derived from the noun μεταφορά (metaphorá), which literally translates to “a transfer” or “a carrying over”. The word is a compound of two Greek parts: μετά (meta): meaning “across,” “over,” or “beyond”. φέρω (pherō): meaning “to bear” or “to carry”.  Verbal Form: metapherein. The noun comes directly from the Greek verb μεταφέρειν (metaphérein), which means “to transfer,” “to carry over,” or “to change”.

While later philosophers like Aristotle used the noun metaphorá to describe rhetorical figures, earlier writers like Plato used the verb metaphérein to describe the act of transferring names or translating ideas from one context to another.  In Modern Greek, the word still literally refers to “transportation” or “transfer,” such as moving goods or passengers.  Although Plato did not use the noun metaphorá (μεταφορά) to describe a rhetorical device, he frequently used the verb μεταφέρειν (metaphérein) in his dialogues to describe the act of “carrying over” or “transferring” objects, names, and ideas.

Examples from Plato’s Works

Critias (113a): Plato uses the verb to describe the transfer of names (onomata) in the sense of translating them from one language to another.

Timaeus (26c): He employs the verb to discuss transferring ideas from the realm of fiction to the realm of reality.

While Plato was a master of using what we now call metaphors (e.g., the “Sun,” the “Line,” and the “Cave”; the charioteer; the aviary; the wax tablet), he typically used terms like eikōn (image or likeness) or paradeigma (model) to name these figures. While Aristotle later popularized the noun metaphorá as a technical term for figurative language in his Poetics (e.g., I’m boiling mad, carrying over language from the physical world to describe the mental), Plato’s use of the verb metaphérein retained its more literal meaning of physical or conceptual “transportation”

CONCLUSION

Against Darwin:

How can the weak be stronger than the strongest? And how can such a statement even be intelligible? … Does not this inversion in the process of life forces imply that, somewhere in life itself, as life itself, a force of death is at work, and something like a beyond of the pleasure principle? (Derrida, Life Death 62).

Nietzsche comments

What surprises me most when I survey the broad destinies of man is that I always see before me the opposite of that which Darwin and his school see or want: selection in favor of the stronger, better-constituted, and the progress of the species. Precisely the opposite is palpable: the elimination of the lucky strokes, the uselessness of the more highly developed types, the inevitable dominion of the average, even the [92] sub-average types. If we are not shown why man should be an exception among creatures, I incline to the prejudice that the school of Darwin has been deluded everywhere. That will to power in which I recognize the ultimate ground and character of all change provides us with the reason why selection is not in favor of the exceptions and lucky strokes: the strongest and most fortunate are weak when opposed by organized herd instincts, by the timidity of the weak, by the vast majority. My general view [my emphasis] of the world of values shows that it is not the lucky strokes, the select types, that have the upper hand in the supreme values that are today placed over mankind; rather it is the décadent types—perhaps there is nothing in the world more interesting than this little desired spectacle.  In (Derrida.  Life Death 63).

For Derrida this relation of substitution [suppléance] of the less strong for the stronger, of the dead for the living, as well as this relation between the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest morality or destructibility, are relations for which the usual logic of relations between life and death will have difficulty providing an explanation. It is this logic that is of interest here.  There is a principle of health/sickness like a fish which is being dominated by a parasite principle of sickness.  Derrida notes

Claude Bernard (whose work, I note in passing, Nietzsche knew—which is not insignificant—and quoted, for example in The Will to Power, p. 364 [of the [99] French translation], at the moment he was underscoring that “health and sickness are not essentially different,” that they are not distinct entities that would fight over the living organism as on a battlefield. To say this would be “silly nonsense and chatter.”34 Between sickness and health there are only differences of degree: it is the exaggeration, disproportion, disproportion, and disharmony of normal phenomena that constitute the morbid state—see Claude Bernard, says Nietzsche). (Derrida, Life Death, 69).

In trying to understand the nature of metaphor, one helpful tool is to identify a phenomenon by triangulating it with a series of converging metaphors.  Derrida says:

If genetic information is defined as the coded program of the synthesis of proteins, then can we not maintain that the following terms, all coming from Claude Bernard, and which are used not just once and by chance but constantly throughout his work, instructional sign [consigne], guiding idea, vital design, vital preordination, vital plan, meaning of phenomena . . . are so many attempts to define, in the absence of the adequate concept, and through the convergence of metaphors, a biological fact that is in some sense designated before being attained?

Plato too operates according to a convergence of metaphors:

Plato famously employed several metaphors in his dialogues to explain the workings of the mind, memory, and knowledge, most notably the wax tablet for memory retention, aviary for knowledge possession, and the charioteer for the soul’s tripartite structure. These analogies highlight the distinction between having knowledge and using it, as well as the soul’s inner conflicts. 

• The Wax Tablet (Theaetetus): Plato describes memory as a block of wax in the soul (varying in size/hardness) that receives imprints from perceptions and thoughts like a signet ring, where knowledge lasts as long as the impression holds.
• The Aviary (Theaetetus): To explain how knowledge is stored but not always accessible, Plato compares the mind to a cage (aviary) filled with birds (pieces of knowledge). A person “catches” a bird to recall knowledge, but may accidentally catch an “ignorance bird” instead.
• The Charioteer (Phaedrus): The mind/soul is depicted as a charioteer (reason) holding reins over two winged horses: one white (noble/spirited) and one black (appetitive/desire), representing the struggle to control desires and achieve wisdom.
• The Cave (Republic): Although often used for the human condition, the cave serves as a metaphor for the mind’s journey from illusion (shadows on a wall) to enlightened understanding of reality (the outside world).
• The “Mind’s Eye” (Republic): Plato refers to the capacity to perceive the highest reality (Forms) as the mind’s eye, which needs to be illuminated by the “sun” of the Good to understand truth.  E.g., I have grapeness invisibly present before my mind’s eye to have a successful trip to the store.