Related Terms • aesthetics • Aristotle

Definition:
A metaphor, a type of analogy, is an attempt to use something familiar (called the vehicle) to draw our attention to something unfamiliar (called the tenor). According to Aristotle in his Poetics:

...metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else; the transference being either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from species to species, or on grounds of analogy

Sometimes, when a metaphor is used too often, the vehicle is treated as a cliché. In order to continuing saying something about the unfamiliar tenor, a vehicle shift occurs, in that artists seek out some new vehicle through which they can communicate. An old, standard vehicle is discarded and a new standard is adopted - at least, until that vehicle also becomes a cliche.

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Related Resources:

What is Aesthetics?
In philosophy, aesthetics is the study of beauty and taste, whether in the form of the comic, the tragic or the sublime. Aesthetics has traditionally been part of other philosophical pursuits like the investigation of epistemology or ethics. However, it started to come into its own and become a more independent pursuit under Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher who saw aesthetics as a unitary and self-sufficient type of human experience.

What is Philosophy?
What is philosophy? Is there any point in studying philosophy, or is it a useless subject? What are the different branches of philosophy - what's the difference between aestheitcs and ethics? What's the difference between metaphysics and epistemology?