Abstract
Aristotle discussed metaphor in the context of rhetoric as an ornament of speech. Although metaphors are found in the whole history of literature, their systematic phil- osophical conceptualisation appears as late as in the 20" century.
My contemplations, however, will be limited to Paula Ricceura's thoughts about metaphors. In his opinion, a metaphor is capable of discovering the world.
Ricoeur differentiates between living and dead metaphors. For him, a living metaphor is restless and finds analogy where none has been seen so far.
On the contrary, a dead metaphor is the second meaning of a word. For Ricceura, a metaphor also has a cognitive competence as it discovers new things.
He connects the process of cognition with imagery and feelings. The metaphor thus transcends the language structure and extends to visuality.
However, we can re- fuse the dependence of images on a language code and shift the issue of metaphor to visuality as such. David Summers suggests turning to images as such and introduces the concept of real metaphor.
A real metaphor brings a real effect which is naturally in a sharp contrast with figurative metaphors in language. Summer's concept of real metaphors relativizes the space and points out its virtuality and the ability of an image to depict the absent.
However, I believe that the space has also another aspect - it is time. A metaphor can work also with regard to time - as a modality of seeing which interconnects works of art throughout history.
Metaphors between images throughout time are metaphors of seeing. What are living metaphors of vision of nowadays? I think they are acausal anachronistic interconnections of works of art.
However, this does not mean that they lose their "literal meaning" - their relation to linear time (chronol- ogy). On the contrary, they enrich it and discover new meanings in anachronistic view of time.
Metaphors of seeing thus represent the dynamism of the development of the history of art.