The Impossibility of Pure Language: Derrida on Aristotle’s Definition of Metaphor Introduction
Traces. AI art Introduction In his Poetics , Aristotle offered one of the most cited definitions of metaphor: it consists, he writes, in “giving the thing a name that belongs to something else” (Poetics 1457b6–9). Jacques Derrida recalls this formula in Margins of Philosophy (p. 231), where it becomes the point of departure for a wide-ranging deconstruction of the philosophical dream of literal language. If metaphor is alien naming, then its opposite must be authentic naming: a speech where every entity possesses its own proper designation. This apparent alternative, Derrida argues, is precisely what metaphysicians have pursued—the fantasy of a discourse purified of figurative intrusion. Yet the very idea of such purity is internally compromised, since it is framed through metaphors of ownership, propriety, and transfer. Aristotle’s Definition and Its Implications Aristotle’s wording situates metaphor as a form of displacement: a name is carried across from its rightful home to...