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What are some good philosophical metaphors?

A

apex13

Greenlighter
Joined
Jan 15, 2011
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I like this one, just to start things proper:

Imagine a boat in the middle of an endless sea, with a sail and an anchor. The wind attempts to push the boat along, but the anchor is firmly into the seabed. Every person is their own boat, with their spirit driving the sail. This sail is what people commonly refer to as "righteousness" or the Golden Rule, do onto others. Most have their sail down, unable to explore the path their spirit would like to take them on. For the anchor is deep, all the lies and manipulations of the world weighs it down. When the person tosses away their fear, and can confront themselves honestly is when the anchor looses strength.

Moral of the analogy: we are all the boat, our fears the anchor, our spirit the wind, while the self rides on the current of infinity.

I'll add more as this progresses.
 
I'm a big fan of the metaphors 'Captain of a sinking ship', 'Richest man in Babylon', and similar ones, for conveying the fool's paradise of ever thinking one has found everlasting glory or good fortune.
 
Consider the daffodil.

And while you're at it, I'll be over here lookin' through your stuff.
 
the eating of an orange is a lot like a good marriage. ;)


but seriously, i like the heaven/hell metaphor. although it is used and abused as a literal sense, the metaphorical one works.
 
I like to think about hidden metaphors that sneak out in our language, and reveal our philosophical thinking.

For example, when we say "my leg hurts", the metaphor is that we "own" the leg.
There are many things one could say about the concept of self that underlies such a metaphor.

Another metaphor I like is the "divided self" metaphor, implicit in language such as
"I refrained from insulting him".
In this metaphor, there are two selves, one of which wants to insult "him", and the other says "nope. bad idea." There is a struggle, and the one which says "no" wins.

Another metaphor that could be considered philosophical is TIME IS SPACE. This shapes our fundamental understanding of the world we live in. This metaphor can be seen in language such as "in the year 2011..." and "on Friday" and "at 2:00" and "Spring is coming".

Another: STATES ARE LOCATIONS, which leads us to say "he is in love" and "X came back from the dead" and "make the wheat into bread". The use of "in", "come back", and "into", which are all basically spatial terms, shows that states of being are talked about as if they were locations.

OP, it seems that you were not thinking about this type of metaphor when you posed the question, but I felt that it is very relevant here.
 
slimvictor, have you read any Lakoff?

More on topic, and since we're talking ships, I've always liked Neurath's boat:

We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction.
 
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