Figurative Language: Nietzsche, Plato, And Aristotle

Figurative language, as a core pillar of language, has played a major part in the development, discovery and creation of most, if not all the concepts in our real world today. Nietzsche, Plato and Aristotle, are three well noted philosophers who all believed that a great extent of our knowledge and everything that we know today and believe to be true is in someway metaphors and illusions. They all understood the strong bond that knowledge and metaphors had. However, they each viewed metaphors from different standpoints, expressing dissimilar opinions of it. This paper will first compare and contrast what Nietzsche, Plato and Aristotle all say about metaphors and then analyze the meaning behind a political metaphor from the current US Presidential …show more content…
To Nietzsche, everything we know and believe to be true is just an illusion/metaphor. Its “the artistic transference of a nerve stimulus into images [and] is, if not the mother, then the grandmother of every single concept” (Nietzsche 2010). Even though he accepts everything as a metaphor/illusion, he views metaphors as harmful for human beings. He believes that being a part of this illusory world might bring happiness in your life, but it shrouds reality, impeding you to learn from your mistakes and suffer more frequently and intensely. Nietzsche says that “only by forgetting this primitive world of metaphor can one live with any repose, security, and consistency” (Nietzsche 2010), expressing that even though we think we are safe and happy, its just an illusion that makes us tense and unsafe. Plato on the other hand has a slightly more accepting standpoint towards metaphors. To Plato, with his analogy of the cave and the sun, “truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images” (Plato 1992) if we only use our senses and see what is shown to us. Thus, the extent of our intellect and knowledge would be limited to the objects or actions we have seen. The shadows are illusions and they hide the truth. Plato says that we need more than just illusions and metaphors for concepts, but need our …show more content…
The idea behind this metaphor is to bring together a group of highly trained individuals to tackle the problems with the public education system in the US, aiming to reshape it for the better. By calling this education team a SWAT team, Clinton refers to an education team in terms of another unlike concept, a SWAT team. This metaphor aims to illustrate distinctly how Clinton wishes to approach the problems in the education system. A SWAT team refers to a team of highly trained and specialized police officers, and thus by calling her education team a SWAT team allows us to picture a team of members who must also be highly trained experts in their fields. Furthermore, the statement’s main focus is regarding the state’s education system making it political as it relates to a department in the