I was taught that 'idiotes' meant private citizen and the concept was transferred metaphorically to mean 'living in a world of your own'. But I don't know. — Cuthbert

'In moderation as a poietis [poet], immoderately as an idiotis ,’ the ancient Athenian saying went. — Amity

Here's wisdom: One who looks out for thier own interests at the expense of others is, quite literally, an idiot. — Banno

GERMAN President Wolfgang Schäuble admitted former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis was "right" to call EU leaders "idiots" when he rebelled to the austerity measures imposed by the Brussels bloc on Greek citizens to solve the eurozone crisis. — Express news: Greek minister was right

Them Greeks did some funny things with words. — tim wood

Yanis Varoufakis, belov'd of German bankers, sparked my curiosity by claiming that idiotis, in ancient Greek, was a derogatory term for one who refuses to think in terms of the common good. — Banno

8 Stupid Viruses?
There is something deranged about what an economy solely focused upon exchange value does to the environment. Only someone wilfully blind could deny how much damage we, whom Agent Smith in The Matrix dubs “a virus […] a disease, a cancer of this planet” (123) have done and continue to do to our collective home. But the fact that we have imagined characters like Agent Smith to warn us of the worst parts of our nature means that we possess a better part as well, a “self-critical […] reflect[ive]” capacity (124), one that can call us out on our most absurd traits, such as allowing financial incentives to profit from environmental and social disasters (125).

This is because we pay no attention to those aspects of nature to which we have not attached exchange value: the air we breathe and the water we drink are largely, in economic terms, worthless, as are rain forests that have not been yet burned down so that cows may graze upon them (thereby giving the land exchange value) (126). And common resources that, if intelligently managed, would provide an endless source of value to us (e.g. fish stocks), in reality get squandered because,in our addiction to competition and short-term profits, fishermen have all the incentive to drive fish species toward extinction (127).

This Varoufakis links to the Hellenic concept of the idiot:

In ancient Greece a person who refused to think in terms of the common good was called an idiotis – a privateer, a person who minded his own business.

'In moderation as a poietis [poet], immoderately as an idiotis ,’ the ancient Athenian saying went.

In the eighteenth century British scholars with a passion for ancient Greek texts gave the word idiotis its current English meaning – a fool. In both these senses our market societies have turned us into idiots.[/u] (128)

Only by ceasing to be idiots (ceasing to value exchange value and only that) can we have a hope of rescuing ourselves from the perils of climate change and mass extinction (129)...

Varoufakis closes with a thought experiment called HALPEVAM (“Heuristic ALgorithmic Pleasure & Experiential VAlue Maximizer”), which is designed to make those critics who might say “But I personally don’t care about any of this” change their minds. In HALPEVAM, you are given the opposite of the Matrix:

a virtual life that is by your own standards the best of all possible lives, and while in it, you have no clue that it is virtual. Above all, its primary directive is never to change our desires or motives to suit its virtual world but to create a virtual reality in perfect harmony with your own desires, sensitivities, aspirations and principles, just as they are.(137) — longform - digested read - yanis varoufakis

On checking, it does mean "one's own". — Banno

Noun
ῐ̓δῐώτης • (idiṓtēs) m (genitive ῐ̓δῐώτου); first declension (Attic, Ionic, Koine)

a private person, one not engaged in public affairs
a private soldier, as opposed to a general
(adjectival use) private, homely
commoner, plebeian
uneducated person, layman, amateur
one who is not in the know, an outsider
an ignorant person, idiot
one who is awkward, clumsy
(in the plural) one's countrymen
— wiktionary

We 'see' love in action, in relation to behavior between people and animals — Tom Storm

God remains a metaphor to me - which, frankly, is a kind word for the idea — Tom Storm

In Metaphor and Religious Language, theologian Janet Martin Soskice proposes the idea that God is a metaphor of “causal relation.” A metaphor that stands in for an as yet unidentified process that effects change in the world. — Tom Storm

Perhaps faith is a metaphor for gullibility? — Tom Storm

Philosophical accounts are almost exclusively about theistic religious faith—faith in God—and they generally, though not exclusively, deal with faith as understood within the Christian branch of the Abrahamic traditions. But, although the theistic religious context settles what kind of faith is of interest,the question arises whether faith of that same general kind also belongs to other, non-theistic, religious contexts, or to contexts not usually thought of as religious at all. Arguably, it may be apt to speak of the faith of a humanist, or even an atheist, using the same general sense of ‘faith’ as applies to the theist case. — SEP: Faith

Unlike god/s, a lover, a court, the poor - all exist and can be demonstrated to exist. Any relationship with them comes with reciprocal and measurable effects and outcomes. — Tom Storm

What is this reality we orient ourselves towards? — Tom Storm

Cue Sinatra singing Impossible Dream... — Tom Storm

What I want and what I fear. — 180 Proof

Her second essay collection, The White Album (1979) contained her most famous line: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

“For me, writing is a kind of exploration,” Didion told the Guardian in 2003. “I’m not sure that I have a social conscience. It’s more an insistence that people tell the truth.” — Guardian - Joan Didion

Even if you are a believer god is still a metaphor for something beyond human understanding. — Tom Storm

God is a metaphor. Or so goes a particular line of thought, as it struggles to make the idea of God meaningful. Metaphors, after all, are symbols used to obliquely describe a deeper reality, to give a sense of the color and flavor of it.

And so for some Jesus followers, steeped in the overripe epistemology of deconstructive academe, this seems like a viable way to approach the Divine.

"God," they will say, "is the word we use as a metaphor to describe our aspirations." "God," folks will say, "is just a word we use to get at other realities."

And, yes, the Divine and the oblique language of metaphor are necessarily related. You can't approach the inherently unknowable in any other way than indirection, as the ancient prophets and visionaries knew...

But...
When we say "God is a metaphor," we are either missing the point of metaphor, or missing the point of faith...

...Saying God is a metaphor is saying to your lover, My love for you is a metaphor. Or telling the court, The truth I'm speaking is a metaphor. Or telling the poor, the downtrodden, and the oppressed that justice is a metaphor.

We miss the point of faith because believing that our symbolic language is the goal of faith is no more and no less idolatrous than fundamentalism. The point of faith is not and has never been the symbols we use to express it. It is the reality towards which we orient ourselves.
— Christiancentury: Is God a Metaphor ?

I was just trying to say that Heidegger's use of a metaphor (if that's what it is) doesn't require that he use more than one word.

Or I could say that more than one word is always required to produce the metaphoricality of a metaphor, because a word spoken or written without context cannot be metaphorical.

Such a contextless word is likely meaningless anyway. But the requirement for contextual words does not negate the claim that the metaphor itself is a metaphor, whether it's one word or a few. — jamalrob

I deny your claim that because two "things" are present, a single word can't carry that complex idea. Yes it can... — god must be atheist

Metaphor goes deep...

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphor/ — Amity

Philosophers need to elucidate (a) the nature of the difference between taking language literally and taking it metaphorically, the nature, if you will, of the reinterpretation language undergoes when we take it metaphorically, and (b) the nature of the division of expressive labor between a metaphor’s focus and its frame...

Literary theorists regularly acknowledge the existence of extended metaphors, unitary metaphorical likenings that sprawl over multiple successive sentences. There are also contracted metaphors, metaphors that run their course within the narrow confines of a single clause or phrase or word. They reveal themselves most readily when distinct metaphors are mixed to powerful, controlled, anything but hilarious effect:

Philosophy is the battle against [the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language]. (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §109) — SEP: Metaphor

Ancient philosophers and rhetoricians viewed metaphor as a temporary self-explanatory change in the usage of a general or singular term, typically a noun or noun phrase. When we resort to metaphor, a term that routinely stands for one thing or kind is made to stand for another, suitably related thing or kind instead, and this change in what the term stands for occurs on the fly, without warning and without special explanation. — SEP: Metaphor 2. The Ancient Accounts

On ancient rhetoric and poetics more generally, see the entries Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Plato on Rhetoric and Poetry in this encyclopedia. — SEP- Metaphor

I mean I have taken in too much literature data, esp. terms. I am not at all in the literature field, you see. — Alkis Piskas

Unfortunately my mind seems to have moved on to more verdant pastures. — jamalrob

But for me, all this is too much literary input! :grin: — Alkis Piskas

(Too many consecutive posts; this is what happens when you don't think things through) — jamalrob

Of course, there are deeper and more interesting levels of metaphor, as pointed out by Amity earlier:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/633114 — jamalrob

Metaphors are also ways of thinking, offering readers (and listeners) fresh ways of examining ideas and viewing the world. — ThoughtCo - Metaphor Definition and Examples

A conceptual metaphor—also known as a generative metaphor—is a metaphor (or figurative comparison) in which one idea (or conceptual domain) is understood in terms of another...

Conceptual metaphors are part of the common language and conceptual precepts shared by members of a culture....

The connections we make are largely unconscious. They're part of an almost automatic thought process....

Three Overlapping Categories of Conceptual Metaphors

Cognitive linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have identified three overlapping categories of conceptual metaphors:

1. An orientational Metaphor is a metaphor that involves spatial relationships, such as up/down, in/out, on/off, or front/back.

2. An ontological Metaphor is a metaphor in which something concrete is projected onto something abstract.

3. A structural Metaphor is a metaphorical system in which one complex concept (typically abstract) is presented in terms of some other (usually more concrete) concept.
— ThoughtCo -

Rather than defining what precisely metaphor is, the research is more concerned with the question of what it does, and how it does what it does. The key area of investigation is the interface between thought and language, their interplay, interaction and convergence.
— Creative multilingualism

https://www.creativeml.ox.ac.uk/what-metaphor-and-how-does-it-work/index.html — Amity

(Too many consecutive posts; this is what happens when you don't think things through) — jamalrob

Even with Dali, there must have been influences, conjunctions, and metaphors within his paintings that the artist didn't deliberately place there...

Watch short documentaries about: Metaphor and Linguistic Diversity, Metaphor and Emotion, Metaphor and Communication, and Metaphor and Creativity.

...so with "Geworfenheit" there is merely a tenor. there can be no mapping. Although it is understandable why one would think it is a metaphor, it seems technically not to be. — jancanc

Watch short documentaries about: Metaphor and Linguistic Diversity, Metaphor and Emotion, Metaphor and Communication, and Metaphor and Creativity.

The Creative Power of Metaphor conference: multimedia output (including films of keynote speakers and roundtables, plus short interviews with poster presenters)

The research project conducted in the context of Creative Multilingualism is designed to investigate metaphor as a phenomenon that is both cognitive and linguistic, and to engage with the movement between cognition and language that is involved in the production and reception of metaphor. Processes are harder to define than things, and a key challenge is that giving ‘cognition’ and ‘language’ separate names presupposes a division within the continuum that is at stake.

The concept of metaphor at the centre of this research project builds on an approach to the phenomenon that George Lakoff and Mark Johnson articulated in 1980 as follows, in a book programmatically entitled Metaphors We Live By:

Metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. [...] We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. (G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, Chicago, 22003, p. 3)...

Our approach is programmatically holistic, and crucially concerned with metaphor as a phenomenon that involves linguistic diversity and action in diverse cultural contexts.
Rather than defining what precisely metaphor is, the research is more concerned with the question of what it does, and how it does what it does. The key area of investigation is the interface between thought and language, their interplay, interaction and convergence. — Creative multilingualism

...therein lies my problem with saying a mere word (in isolation) is a metaphor. — jancanc

"Geworfenheit" has no target/source domain, — jancanc

Well, you sure lit a fuse there! — tim wood

there is a right way to interpret, but always with respect to some standard of interpretation. Thus a book is about this wrt system A of interpretation, and at the same time about B wrt system B of interpretation — tim wood

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." — tim wood

My own understanding is a bit shallow but I'll just go with the flow. — Cuthbert

The word metaphor itself is a metaphor, coming from a Greek term meaning to "transfer" or "carry across." Metaphors "carry" meaning from one word, image, idea, or situation to another. — Metaphor

“Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? ... I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.

Most fortunately it happens, that since Reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends. And when, after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.”

― David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding — David Hume