From sensation to categorization: aesthetic metaphor in Locke and Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

The attempt to describe a particular sensation often, if not inevitably, requires us to draw metaphorical comparisons with another sense, for example, ‘a bitter, lemon yellow’ and ‘the sound of a trumpet is scarlet’, with the end result that metaphors of the order ‘colour is taste’ and ‘sound is colour’ are produced. I argue that the distinction between literal and metaphorical language is bound up with the history of classification and, in particular, the classification of the senses. The two main competing epistemologies in the debate are, on the one hand, Locke's empiricism, which argues for the importance of literal language and the discrete nature of the senses and, on the other, Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, which emphasizes the positive role played by metaphor in cognition and asserts that the senses are interrelated aspects of our bodily engagement with the world. This article (1) outlines the two epistemologies, (2) demonstrates how they lead to different conceptions of our sensory contact with the world and the cognitive value of metaphor, and (3) indicates how my analysis of Merleau-Ponty's aesthetics leads to a reappraisal of the visual and epistemic status of art practice.

Keywords:

• metaphor
• sense perception
• Merleau-Ponty
• cognition
• phenomenology
• aesthetics