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Thomas writes that “to signify something by words or merely by the construction of images . . . yields nothing but the literal sense” and “poetic images refer to something other than themselves only so as to signify them; and so a signification of that sort goes no way beyond the manner in which the literal sense signifies.”

If I understand this, I’m not convinced. First, because this seems to conflate meaning with signification, which I take to be equivalent to reference. They aren’t the same. Second, because how we say what we say is as important as the reference of what we say. I can refer to the same person as a “man” and as a “dirty rat”; they are both literally signifying the same person, but the way they signify inflects the reference. ”Dirty rat” is not just a pointer, but an implicit metaphor that attributes some sort of “ratness” to the dirty rat in question.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 2:25 pm

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Hermeneutics: How we say what we say

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Hermeneutics: How we say what we say

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