Theories of Metaphor in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy

Abstract

Many are unaware that the role of metaphor in philosophical discourse was a source of some serious disagreement among philosophers in the modern period. While most philosophers from the school of British Empiricism, e.g., Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, forbade the use of metaphor in all philosophical or scientific prose, there were other thinkers who were more accepting of the ambiguity and ‘looseness’ of metaphor. In this essay, I first trace the theories of metaphor provided by Hobbes and Locke back to their classical (and Baconian) roots. Then, with the help of recent scholarship, I address the apparent contradiction that exists in their views whereby both Hobbes and Locke reject the use of metaphor in philosophical writing, but then make extensive use of metaphors in their major works. In the end, I claim that the contradiction cannot be resolved and that Hobbes and Locke were simply confused as to the nature and power of metaphor. Lastly, I forward the claim that ‘common sense’ philosopher Thomas Reid (also an Empiricist) would not have suffered from a similar problem because of his more sophisticated philosophy of language.