Metaphor and Political Knowledge

TL;DR: In this article, an alternative view of metaphor and political knowledge is developed by reference to four main problems: Why is political speech metaphorical? How do metaphors make political things manifest? How are political metaphors tested? and Are metaphors indispensable to political expression and knowledge?

Abstract: Since the language of political inquiry seems to be inescapably metaphorical, the question necessarily arises as to how metaphors of various types, including models, enter into the composition and expression of political knowledge. The solutions that have been most influential in contemporary political science can be called the verificationist and constitutivist views of political metaphor. While both views contain important elements of truth, there are fundamental difficulties in each that require the search for a more satisfactory view. An alternative view of metaphor and political knowledge is developed by reference to four main problems: Why is political speech metaphorical? How do metaphors make political things manifest? How are political metaphors tested? and Are metaphors indispensable to political expression and political knowledge? Political inquiry has provided fertile soil for the growth of metaphors. For some who have cultivated this soil, metaphors are brambles to be cleared away, not plants that bear fruit in political knowledge. Yet even the critics of metaphors have not been able to avoid them. In the Leviathan, for example, Hobbes makes a strong case against the use of metaphors in science: The light of human minds is perspicuous words, but by exact definitions first snuffed and purged from ambiguity; reason is the pace; increase of science, the way; and the benefit of mankind, the end. And, on the contrary, metaphors, and senseless and ambiguous words, are like ignes fatui; and reasoning upon them is wandering amongst innumerable absurdities; and their end, contention and sedition, or contempt (1955, pp. 29-30).