Powell, Jeffrey. Review of Clive Cazeaux's METAPHOR AND CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY. NDPR (February 2009).

Cazeaux, Clive. Metaphor and Continental Philosophy from Kant to Derrida. London: Routledge, 2007. Clive Cazeaux's Metaphor and Continental Philosophy: From Kant to Derrida is an ambitious book. It seeks to treat metaphor in a number of selected figures from the historical tradition indicated in the title, but especially in Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, and Derrida. This is no easy matter, for little is said of metaphor in Kant, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger, which leaves one with the task of creating what might be said from out of what has been said. This is an especially difficult task in the case of metaphor, for one is forever tempted to address metaphor as the absence of metaphor, which is to say that one is tempted into providing an account of metaphor in a conceptual, literal discourse. Cazeaux is certainly aware of this difficulty even if he frequently gives in to the temptation. It also seeks, or I assume that it does, to exhibit the relevance of continental philosophy as an historical continuation of the philosophical tradition. What is more, Cazeaux attempts to show that the continental tradition is not only tied to its historical constitution, but that it has also been concerned with the development of strategies for transforming that tradition, strategies that he collects under the name of metaphor. Additionally, Cazeaux wants his study of metaphor to gain some traction with the analytic tradition. One of his theses is that the continental treatment of metaphor can provide the analytic tradition with some much needed tools, especially those in the analytic tradition open to the consequences of the study of metaphor for ontology (in particular, Max Black). In my opinion, it is the attempt to serve so many masters that makes the book a rather unsatisfying read. While it is true that in the end Cazeaux argues for a Heideggerian-Derridean view of metaphor as the interweaving of metaphor and metaphysics (metaphor-as-metaphysics, metaphysics-as-metaphor), it is also true that the Heideggerian discourse gets woven into a metaphorical system to which it became increasingly foreign. That is to say, Cazeaux too frequently resorts to a traditional metaphysical language (e.g., perception, sensation, empiricism, realism, subject-object, theory of knowledge, etc.) for the expression of Heideggerian themes, as if we have now moved beyond Heidegger's concern with the language he found to be inadequate, or even counter-productive, for what was developed in Being and Time. Cazeaux seems far too comfortable expressing Heideggerian themes and concerns in the language of conceptuality, as if Heidegger might be grouped in with a certain epistemological school. It is as if it is possible to distillate the thought of Heidegger into a few pearls of wisdom and translate that wisdom into the current language of the metaphysical tradition, the analytic tradition, or cognitive psychology. While it might well be problematic that the thought of Heidegger seems to be embedded in the language of Heidegger, it should also be noted that this is a problem, not just for Heidegger, but for any thinking deemed to be historical. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15187.