June 25, 2025 • 15 mins
According to Derrida, metaphysicians have spent 2000 years conceptually boxing-in metaphor because they don't want to admit their dependence on figurative language. This has allowed them to trick themselves into believing that fiction and non-fiction are fundamentally different; that one can be true and the other cannot. In White Mythology, Derrida discovers the metaphors buried in philosophy from Plato to Hegel, even as they try to hide them.
We spent three weeks reading this text, you can find the episodes at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills
We spent three weeks reading this text, you can find the episodes at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mahn and he brings up all these obscure texts that
I'm like, I haven't read this. I don't know what
you're talking about. What is reference?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Yeah, as much as I love the guy, this is
why we haven't covered him. He's actually terrible for podcast forum.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
He's the worst name dropper fucking ever. Man, He's always
name drop and who the hell's kangy Am? I'm sure
that name is bouncing around in the Ecole Superior are
in the mid century, But come on, dry up. People
are gonna read you for more than ten fucking years
in different languages, so maybe you should. No, I'm just kidding.
I can't say that shit.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
That's why I know that's I mean, I agree with you.
He has read fucking everything he was. Half of the
names are not even people I've heard of.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
But then again, it's always those fundamental moves that are
being put into question in Dary does texts, so you
can't what is contextuality? Like, is there a difference between
text and context? Is the context somehow outside of the
text and determines the meaning of the text, Like we
just say about language, you know, like, how do I
(00:59):
know what that word means?
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
By the context, the words around it. Okay, fine, what
about those words?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Then?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
How do I know what they mean? Further context? Like
he puts those sorts of things into question, that leads
you down those sometimes frustrating thought loops. And then you
get pissed off and throw the text away. And then
you have a dream and realize you read something beautiful
and go back and then remember that it was in
daridawn and you go fuck, And then you got to
read Darida again. An example of my frustration and the
(01:31):
beauty of his work. Right, Yeah, it's poetic, is what
is it? That is to say? It is very poetic,
and this text is in a way all about poetry.
He involves a lot of Aristotle's poetics. It involves talking
about metaphor. It involves talking about the difference between what
(01:51):
is a metaphor and what is a concept. Concepts are
supposed to be truthful things that science uses. Metaphors are
supposed to be flower figurative things that poets use. How
could they possibly not be super distinct? All the philosophers
he brings up, I have these very precise distinctions between
metaphors and other modes of expression. But Darida is gonna
(02:16):
do his thing and question that question the possibility of
making those clean distinctions between metaphors and concepts.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Right, because language is metaphorical, like everywhere they.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Went through top to bottom, front to back. Baby.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
But I'll just read the first paragraph just we have
a little bit of flavor, because I know that even
though I demanded that the listeners do their homework, I don't.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
Expect them to. They have lives.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
So uh, first on the obverse is what the opening
is called philosophy dot dot dot and from philosophy read
it from a book roughly and more or less a
book to create a flower, and to create it here,
to bring it forth to mount it, rather to let
it mount and find its dawning and turns aside as
(03:05):
though of itself revoluted some grave flower following the reckoning
of a lapidary. We learn to cultivate patients. So in that,
in the spirit of this, we are going to be
cultivating some patients, we can get to overall themes. I
think Eric opened it up there. My my summary of.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
This, what did that even just mean? What you just said?
That first thing, like the f.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Good question, good place to start.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
It's kind of a joke because he's talking about the flower,
and he brings up later in the essay the florid
piece of language, because philosophers say, we're not going to
use florid language, We're going to use true language.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
So he's a he's bringing he's.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Talking about this flower, and then we see him go
in on two ways because you can't ever be sure
of what he's saying, because sometimes he says something or
brings up an author like Anatole France, only to shut
it down and say, but that's not what I mean
at all. So if you're looking at this reader, listener,
I mean, uh, there's these giant, basically page long quotations
(04:10):
taken from novels, taken from so sur a bunch of sources,
and they're the font size this is kind of frustrating.
The font size on the giant block quotations is eleven
and the rest of the font size is twelve.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
It's twelve. Yeah, they're hearts to tell apart.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
So they're very hard to tell apart.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
And if you are like citing this, make sure that
you are finding out who's actually speaking on the page,
because these these these quotations last for entire pages.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah, and yeah, and I noticed that. And they're like
you just said they're like barely different fonts.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
They're like yeah, they're like it's like a half a
size different.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, exactly. It's like what it's like the regular texts
twelve point font and the quotes are like eleven and
you're just like, oh wait shit.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Yeah, kind of a kind of ableists. They're looking at
looking ahead a bit. That that flower thing you mentioned. Uh,
you know, I might be wrong about this, but eventually
he's gonna talk about the sun, right, the sun as
one of those in scare quotes foundational metaphors in Western
(05:12):
philosophy and the sun, you know, so you get these
playful connections, right, A metaphor is a trope? What is
a flower it looks towards the sun? What do we
call that heliotropic? What is the original metaphor in the
Western tradition? The sun? You know, the light of reason,
the obscure and the clear, the dark and the than
(05:33):
the bright, you know, all those things like those are
all very very deep metaphors in philosophy that have supposedly,
as we'll learn in this section, you know, metaphors are
at least we're gonna think with the idea that for
a bit that metaphors are coins that have had like this,
one of the sides rubbed off of them, the side
(05:55):
that has like a figure on it, the sensible part.
It's been rubbed off by use, by usage, right, these metaphysicians,
and they take their coins and they rub them down
so that they're super you know, at they look abstract
and like they don't have any original sense reference to them.
But yeah, he comes and points out the sun later
(06:16):
is like that too, and that's like at the heart
of Aristotle's texts is like the sun, and Plato obviously
too with the cave thing. Right, the sun is like
the er fucking metaphor in philosophy. And he shows that
it's just that it's a it's a metaphor. It has
this like unsensible sensibleness because you can't look straight at
(06:37):
the sun but you see it's light all the time.
Like it has the same problems as any other metaphor does.
And uh, well, that's just that's jumping the gun. Sometimes
with Daridell, you got to bury the lead. Sometimes you
got to jump the gun. That's the only way to
do it. But yeah, that's coming.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
All right, all right, all right, slow down there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
So the sun is the truth obviously in Western philosophy,
and the way we understand truth is by analogy with
the son. You don't you can't look straight at it,
you can never see it directly, but only because of
it can you see other things. So it's the analogy
is because the truth is, then we can have all
(07:19):
these other pieces of truth. We can use perception and
get a part of the truth. We can use math
and science and get other parts of the truth that's
not Deredi's position. That is what the Western metaphysics generally is.
I don't know if you guys noticed, but this thing
is I believe this isn't just a sneak diss at Heidegger.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
Everything in here is against Heidegger, is it?
Speaker 3 (07:44):
I thought he I thought he got so much out
of Hideger, like like when I he did. But when
you watches that documentary on Darida, he kind of he
points to his library. Its like, Heidigger's the only thing
I've read carefully here. I think he says something like that. Anyway,
he's not. He's like, obviously he's very very well read,
but like Heidegger seemed to be the thing he reads
(08:05):
with the most care. And husserl, I guess too.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
That's absolutely true.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
But if you remember, there's a essay he wrote something
like history and Heidiger something to that point, and he
says like Heidiger tried to not be an onto theologian,
but he ended up just falling right back into ato theology.
So when he's talking about these etymology the etymology games
finding out where words came from and then pointing it
(08:32):
and say like this is the true meaning, we've lost
the true meaning.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
You know, you can hear the echoes of Hiderger.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
We've lost the true meaning of beaning because we have
lost the true meanings of these terms. Originally, Darida just
picks that up and shits all over it. But we're
getting ahead of ourselves. I'd like to start with the
opening gambit, and that's this.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Thing with coins.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
The first three vignettes are so Sir Nietzsche and a
character from a novel by Anatole France whose name is Polyphilos,
and they all make the same metaphor, so I'll try
to I'm not gonna do the deconstruction first. I'll present
to you what they present First, we have original language
(09:16):
language in its home language that has to do with
phenomenology to drop that in there, physical stuff, you know,
like our word for our word for truth in English,
the Latins veritas. But in English truth comes from the
word for oak tree. So what's the what's the metaphorphorization
(09:36):
there is? We need to compare it to something solid,
So we find the most solid thing around or whatever
our angle Anglo Saxon ancestors did and say, all.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
Right, we got we got oak.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
We're gonna call truth and compare it to oak, because
truth is solid, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Yeah, not as much sun up there as there was
in ancient Greece.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
I guess the Greeks did the sign and our answer
us there did the trees and the mountains.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
We yet igdrasil the world tree instead of the sun.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Well.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
I actually don't know if the word.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Drew like drewid is that might be Celtic instead of
Anglo Saxon. But anyway, I think so getting caught up
on it all, the all three of these guys Anatole France,
so Sir and Nietzsche make the metaphor of metaphor, which
is a coin and the coin.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
First of all, it has.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Its location in time and space, you know, because a
coin has the name of the country or the name
of the king or whoever I'm on it, which gives
it a physical location in space and time over time.
This is anatole France's character's description of what happens over time.
With a word like drew, which means oak, it gets
(10:53):
the surface gets sanded off, the location at a specific
time and place in a language, in a country. This
gets stand it off, and we're ended that we end
up with something extremely abstract like truth.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Truth is.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Truth originates in the physical, real, sensible, normal world, and eventually,
by the time it gets to us, it's this you know,
cosmic religious, fleeting entity that has all of being in
it and yet is nowhere kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
So we start from a coin. The coin gets effaced
by knife grinders over time. And this is why Nietzsche,
so sir, and this character.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
In the novel, they're all against metaphysics, and Hegel gets
called out here. For example, specifically, Hegel uses terms like
absolute and infinite. These are not even positive terms. They're
just negative.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Terms, negative concepts.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Nothing that exists.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
So that's the opening argument is that metaphysics are just
coins that have the inscriptions sand it off, which which
is you know, very cool, very good, and there's truth
to it.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, that the coin, the coin metaphor is very dominant.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
And here.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Yeah, then then when you're not just using like you know,
words or like coins or symbols or like coins, you
can exchange them for whatever you want kind of thing here,
then they become like the metaphor of metaphors.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
But the idea is right again, we have an original meaning,
original meaning with a functional value of functional utility, and
over time it becomes abstracted. Now this is something that
we can observe. But Darida is not going to use
this as his explanation. So if you if you cite
anything from the first fourteen pages, then he pulls a
(12:45):
one eighty and goes, but we're not gonna We're not.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
That doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
He problematizes, Okay, metaphor in the text of philosophy. He
like basically just says the title right away, and it's
kind of like this, this is the topic metaphor in
the text of philosophy. But then Daridad does his thing,
you know it as do we really understand what this means, like,
I feel like I'm getting this point of Yeah, philosophical
(13:12):
language depends on metaphor. It's metaphorical top to bottom. But
the point about ordinary language, Okay, maybe that's what he
means here is that you know, this poliphialos guy is
going to start thinking about these words that have this
ordinary meaning.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
It was very closely connected to the original sense experience. Right,
you see something with four legs, and it's furry, and
it barks and it licks you when you try to
pet it. Whatever. You call that thing a dog? You
have this, you call that thing a dog. Right, it's
a sensible there's a sensible image the figure. Right, But
(13:52):
over time that figurative sensible meaning is what gets rubbed off. Right,
so suddenly I can say, like, you know, you're a dog,
or like someone you say this this that man is
a pig, right to mean he's lecherous. Rights has nothing
to do with the original meaning.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
We think we know, you know, oh, pigs kind of
roll around in dirt, But then science tells us they're
actually very clean animals and actually genetically very close to us,
and we can use their organs for transplants sometimes. Okay,
all that, but we can still call someone a pig
and mean they're lecherous, right that that original sensible image
we encounter. This is almost like, very close to Nietzsche's
(14:33):
argument in in the beginning of on Truth and Lives
in a non moral sense, he says, you know, the
first metaphor this, the nervous sensation is transformed into an image,
and then the image is transformed into a concept. Second metaphor, right,
and the and the and the concepts. Originally then they
(14:54):
just they lose their connection with original sensible experience, and
we perceive that as being generalized. Right, Oh, they have
this general value. Now we can use things like the
word truth to mean so many different things because it
has no sensible figurative ground anymore. It's been rubbed off.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Well, A good example is the term infinite, because especially
in Christian theology, we have this term infinite applied to God,
eternal applied to God. These are negatives, right, There's nothing
that you can point to that's infinite. There's nothing you
can point to eternal. You just look at something in
time and go, well, God's the opposite of that, or
(15:36):
infinite like a not just used by Christianity but by Hagel,
not finite. We only know finite things. But I'm talking
about this other thing.
Mahn and he brings up all these obscure texts that
I'm like, I haven't read this. I don't know what
you're talking about. What is reference?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Yeah, as much as I love the guy, this is
why we haven't covered him. He's actually terrible for podcast forum.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
He's the worst name dropper fucking ever. Man, He's always
name drop and who the hell's kangy Am? I'm sure
that name is bouncing around in the Ecole Superior are
in the mid century, But come on, dry up. People
are gonna read you for more than ten fucking years
in different languages, so maybe you should. No, I'm just kidding.
I can't say that shit.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
That's why I know that's I mean, I agree with you.
He has read fucking everything he was. Half of the
names are not even people I've heard of.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
But then again, it's always those fundamental moves that are
being put into question in Dary does texts, so you
can't what is contextuality? Like, is there a difference between
text and context? Is the context somehow outside of the
text and determines the meaning of the text, Like we
just say about language, you know, like, how do I
(00:59):
know what that word means?
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
By the context, the words around it. Okay, fine, what
about those words?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Then?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
How do I know what they mean? Further context? Like
he puts those sorts of things into question, that leads
you down those sometimes frustrating thought loops. And then you
get pissed off and throw the text away. And then
you have a dream and realize you read something beautiful
and go back and then remember that it was in
daridawn and you go fuck, And then you got to
read Darida again. An example of my frustration and the
(01:31):
beauty of his work. Right, Yeah, it's poetic, is what
is it? That is to say? It is very poetic,
and this text is in a way all about poetry.
He involves a lot of Aristotle's poetics. It involves talking
about metaphor. It involves talking about the difference between what
(01:51):
is a metaphor and what is a concept. Concepts are
supposed to be truthful things that science uses. Metaphors are
supposed to be flower figurative things that poets use. How
could they possibly not be super distinct? All the philosophers
he brings up, I have these very precise distinctions between
metaphors and other modes of expression. But Darida is gonna
(02:16):
do his thing and question that question the possibility of
making those clean distinctions between metaphors and concepts.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Right, because language is metaphorical, like everywhere they.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Went through top to bottom, front to back. Baby.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
But I'll just read the first paragraph just we have
a little bit of flavor, because I know that even
though I demanded that the listeners do their homework, I don't.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
Expect them to. They have lives.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
So uh, first on the obverse is what the opening
is called philosophy dot dot dot and from philosophy read
it from a book roughly and more or less a
book to create a flower, and to create it here,
to bring it forth to mount it, rather to let
it mount and find its dawning and turns aside as
(03:05):
though of itself revoluted some grave flower following the reckoning
of a lapidary. We learn to cultivate patients. So in that,
in the spirit of this, we are going to be
cultivating some patients, we can get to overall themes. I
think Eric opened it up there. My my summary of.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
This, what did that even just mean? What you just said?
That first thing, like the f.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Good question, good place to start.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
It's kind of a joke because he's talking about the flower,
and he brings up later in the essay the florid
piece of language, because philosophers say, we're not going to
use florid language, We're going to use true language.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
So he's a he's bringing he's.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Talking about this flower, and then we see him go
in on two ways because you can't ever be sure
of what he's saying, because sometimes he says something or
brings up an author like Anatole France, only to shut
it down and say, but that's not what I mean
at all. So if you're looking at this reader, listener,
I mean, uh, there's these giant, basically page long quotations
(04:10):
taken from novels, taken from so sur a bunch of sources,
and they're the font size this is kind of frustrating.
The font size on the giant block quotations is eleven
and the rest of the font size is twelve.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
It's twelve. Yeah, they're hearts to tell apart.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
So they're very hard to tell apart.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
And if you are like citing this, make sure that
you are finding out who's actually speaking on the page,
because these these these quotations last for entire pages.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah, and yeah, and I noticed that. And they're like
you just said they're like barely different fonts.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
They're like yeah, they're like it's like a half a
size different.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, exactly. It's like what it's like the regular texts
twelve point font and the quotes are like eleven and
you're just like, oh wait shit.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Yeah, kind of a kind of ableists. They're looking at
looking ahead a bit. That that flower thing you mentioned. Uh,
you know, I might be wrong about this, but eventually
he's gonna talk about the sun, right, the sun as
one of those in scare quotes foundational metaphors in Western
(05:12):
philosophy and the sun, you know, so you get these
playful connections, right, A metaphor is a trope? What is
a flower it looks towards the sun? What do we
call that heliotropic? What is the original metaphor in the
Western tradition? The sun? You know, the light of reason,
the obscure and the clear, the dark and the than
(05:33):
the bright, you know, all those things like those are
all very very deep metaphors in philosophy that have supposedly,
as we'll learn in this section, you know, metaphors are
at least we're gonna think with the idea that for
a bit that metaphors are coins that have had like this,
one of the sides rubbed off of them, the side
(05:55):
that has like a figure on it, the sensible part.
It's been rubbed off by use, by usage, right, these metaphysicians,
and they take their coins and they rub them down
so that they're super you know, at they look abstract
and like they don't have any original sense reference to them.
But yeah, he comes and points out the sun later
(06:16):
is like that too, and that's like at the heart
of Aristotle's texts is like the sun, and Plato obviously
too with the cave thing. Right, the sun is like
the er fucking metaphor in philosophy. And he shows that
it's just that it's a it's a metaphor. It has
this like unsensible sensibleness because you can't look straight at
(06:37):
the sun but you see it's light all the time.
Like it has the same problems as any other metaphor does.
And uh, well, that's just that's jumping the gun. Sometimes
with Daridell, you got to bury the lead. Sometimes you
got to jump the gun. That's the only way to
do it. But yeah, that's coming.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
All right, all right, all right, slow down there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
So the sun is the truth obviously in Western philosophy,
and the way we understand truth is by analogy with
the son. You don't you can't look straight at it,
you can never see it directly, but only because of
it can you see other things. So it's the analogy
is because the truth is, then we can have all
(07:19):
these other pieces of truth. We can use perception and
get a part of the truth. We can use math
and science and get other parts of the truth that's
not Deredi's position. That is what the Western metaphysics generally is.
I don't know if you guys noticed, but this thing
is I believe this isn't just a sneak diss at Heidegger.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
Everything in here is against Heidegger, is it?
Speaker 3 (07:44):
I thought he I thought he got so much out
of Hideger, like like when I he did. But when
you watches that documentary on Darida, he kind of he
points to his library. Its like, Heidigger's the only thing
I've read carefully here. I think he says something like that. Anyway,
he's not. He's like, obviously he's very very well read,
but like Heidegger seemed to be the thing he reads
(08:05):
with the most care. And husserl, I guess too.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
That's absolutely true.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
But if you remember, there's a essay he wrote something
like history and Heidiger something to that point, and he
says like Heidiger tried to not be an onto theologian,
but he ended up just falling right back into ato theology.
So when he's talking about these etymology the etymology games
finding out where words came from and then pointing it
(08:32):
and say like this is the true meaning, we've lost
the true meaning.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
You know, you can hear the echoes of Hiderger.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
We've lost the true meaning of beaning because we have
lost the true meanings of these terms. Originally, Darida just
picks that up and shits all over it. But we're
getting ahead of ourselves. I'd like to start with the
opening gambit, and that's this.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Thing with coins.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
The first three vignettes are so Sir Nietzsche and a
character from a novel by Anatole France whose name is Polyphilos,
and they all make the same metaphor, so I'll try
to I'm not gonna do the deconstruction first. I'll present
to you what they present First, we have original language
(09:16):
language in its home language that has to do with
phenomenology to drop that in there, physical stuff, you know,
like our word for our word for truth in English,
the Latins veritas. But in English truth comes from the
word for oak tree. So what's the what's the metaphorphorization
(09:36):
there is? We need to compare it to something solid,
So we find the most solid thing around or whatever
our angle Anglo Saxon ancestors did and say, all.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
Right, we got we got oak.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
We're gonna call truth and compare it to oak, because
truth is solid, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Yeah, not as much sun up there as there was
in ancient Greece.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
I guess the Greeks did the sign and our answer
us there did the trees and the mountains.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
We yet igdrasil the world tree instead of the sun.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Well.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
I actually don't know if the word.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Drew like drewid is that might be Celtic instead of
Anglo Saxon. But anyway, I think so getting caught up
on it all, the all three of these guys Anatole France,
so Sir and Nietzsche make the metaphor of metaphor, which
is a coin and the coin.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
First of all, it has.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Its location in time and space, you know, because a
coin has the name of the country or the name
of the king or whoever I'm on it, which gives
it a physical location in space and time over time.
This is anatole France's character's description of what happens over time.
With a word like drew, which means oak, it gets
(10:53):
the surface gets sanded off, the location at a specific
time and place in a language, in a country. This
gets stand it off, and we're ended that we end
up with something extremely abstract like truth.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Truth is.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Truth originates in the physical, real, sensible, normal world, and eventually,
by the time it gets to us, it's this you know,
cosmic religious, fleeting entity that has all of being in
it and yet is nowhere kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
So we start from a coin. The coin gets effaced
by knife grinders over time. And this is why Nietzsche,
so sir, and this character.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
In the novel, they're all against metaphysics, and Hegel gets
called out here. For example, specifically, Hegel uses terms like
absolute and infinite. These are not even positive terms. They're
just negative.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Terms, negative concepts.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Nothing that exists.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
So that's the opening argument is that metaphysics are just
coins that have the inscriptions sand it off, which which
is you know, very cool, very good, and there's truth
to it.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, that the coin, the coin metaphor is very dominant.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
And here.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Yeah, then then when you're not just using like you know,
words or like coins or symbols or like coins, you
can exchange them for whatever you want kind of thing here,
then they become like the metaphor of metaphors.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
But the idea is right again, we have an original meaning,
original meaning with a functional value of functional utility, and
over time it becomes abstracted. Now this is something that
we can observe. But Darida is not going to use
this as his explanation. So if you if you cite
anything from the first fourteen pages, then he pulls a
(12:45):
one eighty and goes, but we're not gonna We're not.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
That doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
He problematizes, Okay, metaphor in the text of philosophy. He
like basically just says the title right away, and it's
kind of like this, this is the topic metaphor in
the text of philosophy. But then Daridad does his thing,
you know it as do we really understand what this means, like,
I feel like I'm getting this point of Yeah, philosophical
(13:12):
language depends on metaphor. It's metaphorical top to bottom. But
the point about ordinary language, Okay, maybe that's what he
means here is that you know, this poliphialos guy is
going to start thinking about these words that have this
ordinary meaning.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
It was very closely connected to the original sense experience. Right,
you see something with four legs, and it's furry, and
it barks and it licks you when you try to
pet it. Whatever. You call that thing a dog? You
have this, you call that thing a dog. Right, it's
a sensible there's a sensible image the figure. Right, But
(13:52):
over time that figurative sensible meaning is what gets rubbed off. Right,
so suddenly I can say, like, you know, you're a dog,
or like someone you say this this that man is
a pig, right to mean he's lecherous. Rights has nothing
to do with the original meaning.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
We think we know, you know, oh, pigs kind of
roll around in dirt, But then science tells us they're
actually very clean animals and actually genetically very close to us,
and we can use their organs for transplants sometimes. Okay,
all that, but we can still call someone a pig
and mean they're lecherous, right that that original sensible image
we encounter. This is almost like, very close to Nietzsche's
(14:33):
argument in in the beginning of on Truth and Lives
in a non moral sense, he says, you know, the
first metaphor this, the nervous sensation is transformed into an image,
and then the image is transformed into a concept. Second metaphor, right,
and the and the and the concepts. Originally then they
(14:54):
just they lose their connection with original sensible experience, and
we perceive that as being generalized. Right, Oh, they have
this general value. Now we can use things like the
word truth to mean so many different things because it
has no sensible figurative ground anymore. It's been rubbed off.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Well, A good example is the term infinite, because especially
in Christian theology, we have this term infinite applied to God,
eternal applied to God. These are negatives, right, There's nothing
that you can point to that's infinite. There's nothing you
can point to eternal. You just look at something in
time and go, well, God's the opposite of that, or
(15:36):
infinite like a not just used by Christianity but by Hagel,
not finite. We only know finite things. But I'm talking
about this other thing.
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