History and Escapement: The Rise and Fall of Metaphor

Author: (Dutch) Ankersmit Han Zeng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-11-01
Features: Metaphor has a significant effect in constructing knowledge for social and political purposes, especially in the field of historiography. Metaphor is one of the most powerful linguistic tools for human understanding of the world. By "anthropomorphizing" social reality, even material reality, metaphor makes the unfamiliar world familiar to us, enabling us to grasp reality in the true sense of the words. Metaphor always guides us to view less familiar systems through more familiar ones. The author conducts an in-depth analysis of the process by which metaphor functions in historical writing, offering unique and profound insights. This book consists of seven essays and a long introduction. Reading this work helps us explore the intellectual journey of the author and provides a glimpse of the panorama of Western historical philosophy in the late 20th century from one perspective.