Is metaphor inherently a ‘category mistake’? (Denouncing such mistakes seems to have become the new form of witch hunting.)
Thought develops consciously through language, but language is formed by cultural accretion. Within that context, linguistic expression forms an expression within its own terms. That is not necessarily true to the perception that prompted the thought. Language has its own references and autonomy. I like to think that is why Samuel Johnson advised writers to re-read their texts and to strike anything they thought ‘particularly fine’. It was, I hope, not just an aversion to purple passages, but a recognition that what seems especially linguistically satisfying is likely to have forsaken the awkward attempt to express thought, and become a linguistic creation, a work or art – or perhaps craft – in its own terms.
Metaphor challenges and upsets the linguistic integrity. It is a higher form of art in miniature. Perhaps all art is a category mistake.
