2.103
Seeing that the gods war amongst each other—even as possibility—is a metaphoric undertaking, for it involves a shift where, on the hinge of what is common, we see that it fits just so.
Of course, saying an idea involves a metaphoric undertaking doesn’t deny its reality or mean it’s fictive. We have this impression because we translate metaphor as part of the metaphor/literal binary grounded in the imaginary/real binary. Zwicky shows that metaphoric phenomena are broader than this: metaphors aren’t exclusively literary, for they point to ontological truths, including through their form (X is and is not Y).
And yet, metaphors do rely on a contrast with literalness, understood as calcified thought. This literalness isn’t the binary opposite of metaphor: the literal is derivative insofar as it’s the calcification of metaphoric relations. Metaphor and the literal are both real, and their distinction is one of degree: literality’s metaphoricity can be revived through certain gestures — as in the following case, where, in drawing our attention to the loss of metaphor, the metaphor is partially revived: “[A metaphor] dies when it enters a language-game [….] Nothing is rescued from familiarity by its gestures; we are not struck by a similarity of aspects. (‘The eye’s lid.’)”[1]
In a metaphor, there is both the revealing of commonality (X is Y) as well as the revealing of difference (X is not Y): and, so, the metaphysics implied by the statement ‘the gods war amongst each other’ are also not the case because we remain in our world. Our world is not that world. And yet, our world is open to transformation, and metaphors can be transformative (§2.2).
Our way of doing things isn’t final, even if it may appear this way. — This insight can, if it comes with sufficient force, be transformative: things needn’t be this way.
[1] Zwicky, W&M, LH22.