Metaphors everywhere; where is “pure reason”?
Many professionals (including many lawyers) believe that the careful use of “reason” cannot involve the use of one’s imagination. This is absolutely untrue. The belief in “pure reason” has always and everywhere proven to be the source of great confusion among those who strive to use langage precisely.
Responding to the Enlightenment claim that Reason itself is “rigorous, linear, cool, and unemotional” Steven L. Winter points out that such a claim actually proclaims the metaphorical quality of reason: “reason is cold; it is rigorous; it is linear; it is clear; it is felt. Indeed, in its dependence on embodied experiences like temperature and rigor, the metaphorical quality of reason is anything but detached and impersonal.” Steven L. Winter, “Death is the Mother of Metaphor,” 105 HARV. L. REV., 745, 749 (1991).
Winter gives numerous examples of metaphors connecting our immediate experience even high-level legal concepts. One of these metaphors is of law as a “person.” For instance, we speak of the body of law, we ask what laws say “on their face.” We refer to “seminal” cases, as well as their “progeny.” We “strike down” statutes, and sometimes recall “dead” legal concepts. Winter, Mark Johnson and George Lakoff each argue that these uses of metaphors constitute far more than poetry. Their use is essential to bridging the gap between the high level principles of every profession and the real world.
