Heidegger and Derrida on Philosophy and Metaphor: Imperfect Thought

The relationship between metaphor and philosophy is the main focus of this engrossing study by continental philosopher Giuseppe Stellardi. Three separately identifiable, but strictly interconnected, thematic directions are explored: (1) the theory of metaphor; (2) the theory of philosophical discourse; and (3) a close analysis of texts by Heidegger and Derrida for what they reveal about both metaphor and philosophical discourse. The works of these two specific philosophers are examined for a number of reasons: first, they attract questions that inevitably concern the meaning of philosophy itself; second, they make fundamental points concerning metaphor and its relationship to philosophy; third, the particular quality of their language is closely related to poetic discourse; and fourth, the relationship of their texts to metaphor give them an essential quality that can provisionally be described as "incompleteness."

Stellardi also includes a discussion of the fundamental debate on metaphor between Derrida and Ricoeur and a detailed examination of philosophy as a "mode of discourse" among (and in relation to) others. The result is an idea of philosophy as essentially imperfect and self-destructive, and yet indispensable in the economy of the modes of discourse.

Avoiding the obscurity that characterizes much philosophical writing on this complex subject, Stellardi presents a well-defined analysis in a clear and direct style.