Metaphor and Metaphysics

Philosophical Connection

Our philosophical discussion dealt primarily with the possibility of "another world"--a world beyond the world, a life after life, a metaphysical realm. "Metaphysical" means literally "beyond nature"--beyond everything that can be perceived by the senses, and beyond space and time. The difficulty with talking about metaphysical beings and entities is not that "nobody has yet come back to tell us about them" (in the way 600 years ago nobody had come back to Europe to tell people about America and its inhabitants), but rather that we do not understand narrations that describe beings or things that exist outside space or time, and that cannot be perceived in any way whatsoever.

Somewhere in paradise Robin Williams shouts "Time doesn't exist here!" But the very utterance of that statement takes time. And it is plainly visible that Williams does not only cross spaces, but that his and our senses are fully involved in the story. What we see is a phantastic story in this world, not in a metaphysical "beyond." (Which suggests that the film deals with earthly and human problems in the form of a poetic myth.)

Yet, the film is full of suggestions that the conception of a life after life is to be taken literally, that the story is meant as a metaphysical statement. That should present some puzzles for a thoughtful viewer ....

Metaphor and Metaphysics

Wittgenstein and Analytic Philosophy
The 20th Century Critique of Religion

Roughly at the beginning of the 20th century a new type of philosophy began to develop, a type that distinguishes 20th century thinking from all previous types of thought. This type of philosophy is usually called "Analytic" or "Linguistic" philosophy. Among its most prominent founders were Bernard Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and among its most noted characteristics is the fact that philosophers do not talk about the world directly anymore, but about statements concerning the world. The immediate subject matter of "Analytic" or "Linguistic" philosophy is not reality, but language. The explicit exploration of the facts of the world is deliberately left to disciplines which specialize in the collection of hard data, the natural and social sciences, or to any other fields of strictly empirical research. Philosophy, by contrast, confines itself to the painstaking clarification of concepts, and it does so through the logical and semantic analysis of the linguistic signs and structures through which we communicate about reality.

This is not to say that 20th century philosophers have simply become philologists or linguists. Analytic philosophers still try to shed light on such traditional philosophical problems as the nature of the mind, the basis of morality, the definition of Art, etc. But they do so by paying attention to the details of language in a way that earlier philosophers would have found excessive and unnecessary. Analytic philosophers are convinced that no valid insights can be gained without scrutinizing the way language mediates and shapes our perception and understanding of the world.

This re-definition of the subject of Philosophy at the beginning of the 20th century was offered because, among other things, philosophers experienced something like a professional identity crisis. Philosophy used to be a very comprehensive field, namely (as the original Greek term philo-sophia says) the love of "wisdom". And this wisdom included not only the art of living a good life, but also the knowledge of everything in the world from astronomy and mathematics to the nature of human society and the inner workings of the soul. In Antiquity there was no kind of knowledge that was not worth being mastered by a philosopher. Mastering everything that was known, however, became increasingly difficult as the body of human knowledge increased. In time specialization became inevitable. Physics and mathematics were separated from Philosophy to become independent disciplines, and so eventually were chemistry, biology, arts and letters, and in the end even psychology and the exploration of the mind. The question arose as to what was left to do for Philosophy proper. Two core fields remained, Logic and Metaphysics--Logic as the systematic exploration of the laws of correct thinking, and Metaphysics as the systematic exploration of the ultimate nature of Being. And although much of the advanced work in logic was also done by mathematicians, no other discipline laid claim to the two fields, and Philosophy for the time being was saved from academic extinction.

Within philosophy, however, a fierce controversy developed. While more traditional philosophers tried to maintain Metaphysics as a legitimate academic enterprise, early Analytic philosophers attacked it as a pseudo-science, as a reservoir of conceptual confusions with an undeserved reputation of depth which should belong to the realm of religion and faith rather than the world of sober, rational inquiry. Leading Analytic philosophers were adamant in their stance that the only legitimate thing left to do for philosophers was logical analysis and conceptual clarification. Everything else was either empirical science, or--literally--nonsense. As Ludwig Wittgenstein put it in his trailblazing Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: "The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e., propositions of natural science--i.e., something that has nothing to do with philosophy--and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although it would not be satisfying to the other person--he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy--this method would be the only strictly correct one. ...Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

At the end of the 20th century it has become clear that the older types of philosophy have survived this "linguistic revolution" (just as forms of figurative painting have survived the revolution of Abstract art). At most universities such schools of thought as Phenomenology, Existentialism, or Marxism coexist with various strands of Analytic philosophy. The main point that should be noted, however, is the fact that what is new and most characteristic for 20th century philosophical thinking is the widespread change from talking about the world directly to talking about statements about the world. It is this that sets 20th century thinking most clearly apart from traditional philosophy.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was born in Vienna, but received the professional part of his education in England, where he first studied engineering, and then mathematics and Analytic philosophy. Bertrand Russell, his teacher and friend, soon came to think of Wittgenstein as a philosophical genius who was effecting major break-throughs in the Theory of Logic and Philosophical Analysis. During World War I, while fighting in the Austrian army, Wittgenstein wrote the Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus, a slim volume which became one of the classics of 20th century philosophy. It inspired the group of rebellious philosophers that became known as the "Vienna Circle," and it provided the main basis for Logical Positivism, the school of thought that was most actively engaged in eliminating Metaphysics from Philosophy.

After the war, Wittgenstein (a millionaire by inheritance) gave away all his money, gave up Philosophy, considered becoming a monk, spent two years designing and building a radically modernist house for his sister, and finally decided to make a living as a school teacher in the Austrian country side. It was not until the end of the 1920s that he could be persuaded to return to the University of Cambridge and to professional Philosophy. He spent the rest of his life teaching and critiquing his own earlier work, significantly radicalizing his deconstruction of Metaphysics and traditional Philosophy. Although he became ever more dissatisfied with academia as a way of life and inquiry, his philosophical influence was enormous among young professional philosophers. His Philosophical Investigations, posthumously published in 1953, is one of the profoundest and most important books of 20th century philosophy.

Analytic Philosophy started out as a wholesale critique of older fields of philosophical inquiry. By targeting Metaphysics (traditionally considered the indispensable foundation of Philosophy) it aimed at the very heart of the discipline. In his Tractatus Wittgenstein stated rather bluntly that Philosophy as such was finished, a thing of the past. And an important by-product of this critique of Metaphysics was a new kind of critique of religion--at least of any kind of metaphysical religion. This new kind of critique will be considered in what follows. Earlier critiques of religion had taken a variety of forms. Critics had argued that religion was an illusory solution to real social problems, that it was feeding on unresolved psychological conflicts in people's minds, that it was based on fear and intimidation, and that its organizers, the caste of priests, were exploiting the ignorance of the masses whom they continued to keep in the dark. Historians had documented the abuses of power that had emanated from religious institutions--the burning of "witches", the persecution of heretics, or the nurturing of a spirit of intolerance that led to massacres and wars. There was finally the growing recognition of the great variety of past and present religious faiths, a variety that made the claim to exclusive truth by any one of them seem arrogant and benighted.

Running through all these critiques of religion, however, was a basic contention that seemed to damn it foremost, the contention that the key assertions of almost all religions were either wildly improbable or outright false. Dogmas like that of the immaculate conception of Mary seemed to fly in the face of modern scientific reason, tales of miracles were unacceptable to people who were familiar with the laws of nature, and faith in an immortal soul or a deity of which there was no empirical evidence increasingly looked like mere superstition. In a globalized culture that was characterized by an increasing power of human beings over the formerly mysterious forces of nature, belief in science and its demands for empirical evidence became something like a dominant creed. Belief in a supernatural world began to look like an hypothesis that would never be proven true. It was the idea of empirical evidence or proof that seemed to make science and religion forever incompatible.

The Analytic critique of religion differs from such thinking in that it does not say that religious assertions are unproved or false, but that they cannot be understood. And they cannot be understood not because they are difficult or complex, but because they are literally without sense. Religious statements, in other words, are neither true nor false, but literally non-sense. Strictly speaking they are not statements at all, but just so many empty sounds or marks on paper. To illustrate: The statement "Pigs eat corn" is true. The statement "Pigs fly by flapping their ears" is false. The statement "Pigs gorban toves" is neither true nor false; it is nonsense. According to the above Analytic philosophers, key religious statements are essentially like "Pigs gorban toves"--wordlike formulations without sense. Nobody can either believe or disbelieve "Pigs gorban toves." Because before one can either believe or not believe a statement one has to understand it, and that we are not capable of in the case of religious or metaphysical utterances.

Statements can be nonsensical in different ways. "Pigs gorban toves" is nonsensical on the face of it. So, presumably, is Lewis Carrol's famous poem "Jabberwocky": "Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/Did gyre and gimble in the wabe ..." Other statements are nonsensical as well, but at first sight they look as if they had a meaning. "My feelings weigh 1.74 pounds" would be an example, or "The inflation rate is bright yellow". At first sight certain religious statements look like regular statements as well. Statements like "The dead warrior is passing on to another world", or "God sees everything" certainly do not look as nonsensical as "Pigs gorban toves." Yet they are, according to the above Analytic philosophy. Their lack of meaning, however, has to be shown by a more detailed analysis.

"Pigs gorban toves" is unintelligible because two of its "words" have no meaning. It is one of the ways in which a sentence can fail to make sense. It is often argued that that is the case with one of the key statements of Theism, namely "God exists". This statement is said to be nonsensical because one of its words cannot be satisfactorily defined--"God". To say "God exists" is like saying "Toves exist." Nobody can say whether it is true or false, because nobody knows what it says. Nobody can thus either believe or refuse to believe it.

If "God exists" is nonsense, then a key statement of Atheism is nonsensical as well--"God does not exist". Even the Agnostic "I do not know whether God exists" would not make any sense. Neither Theists nor Atheists nor Agnostics know what they are talking about-- their "statements" are nothing but empty signs or sounds. "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" was Wittgenstein's recommendation. The only thing an Analytic humanist might say here is: "I am so far away from religion, I am not even an Agnostic."

It will not be necessary here to get into the controversy of whether "God" can be satisfactorily defined or not. The case is worth mentioning as a schematic illustration of the way in which the Analytic critique of religion is different from previous critiques, and how Analytic philosophers talk about statements, and not about the world. (The case may also be interesting in connection with the idea that there are more relaxed ways of being non-religious than Atheism--the doctrine which often seems to confirm too much by its passionate denial.) To further indicate, however, the peculiar sensibility of Analytic philosophy, the following controversy is worth mentioning.

There has in recent years been a discussion among theologians about whether God is male or female (a discussion which is similar to the one about whether God is "Black" or "White"). Masny feminist theologians find the description of God as "father" as offensive as earlier thinkers found the description of God as an authoritarian "lord" (which seemed to reflect the feudal world of monarchs and serfs). In certain circles the determination of God's gender has therefore become a matter of great political importance. The question in this controversy is, then, whether the traditional or the feminist description of God is true. An Analytic philosopher would have trouble entering the fray on either side. An Analytic philosopher's first question would not be whether the assertion "God is female" is true or false, but whether it can be understood at all. How can God have a gender? Since presumably in the case of God that is not a matter of genitals, is it a matter of social role, such as being the father (rather than the mother) of Jesus? What exactly would make God male rather than female in this matter? Is God's gender a matter of disposition toward humankind? Is the occasional genocide that Yahweh initiates something typically male, something a goddess would not do? Or is God's love something that reveals a more female character? Such questions seem unanswerable and strangely inappropriate. In thinking about them they seem to cease even being questions. The question whether God is male or female begins to look like the question whether Lake Huron is male or female. There is no way to tell. But a question that has no possible answer is not really a question. What looks like a question turns out to be just a series of sounds--"language on a holiday", as Wittgenstein was to call it in his later philosophy.

To further exemplify the problems of meaning that arise in connection with religious statements it will be worthwhile to take a closer look at a seemingly unproblematic statement like "God sees everything". The statement seems clear and easy to understand; it could easily be uttered in conversations about religious matters. Yet, upon closer inspection it reveals all the difficulties that Analytic philosophers have in connection with metaphysical propositions. The difficulties in question are, in fact, such that they inspired a whole theory concerning religious statements, a theory meant to solve these difficulties.

It is obvious why a sentence like "God sees everything" would be puzzling to anyone who gives some explicit thought to its meaning. Seeing is something that involves persons-- functioning eyeballs, suitable viewing positions, and other physical details that cannot very well be connected with God. God, after all, is said to be non-physical But how can a non-physical being see? To see without a body seems to be as impossible as sneezing or having an orgasm without a body, or as impossible as a smile without a face or a mouth. The word "see" does not seem to mean anything in connection with a non-physical being, as little as such words as "sneeze", "smile", "shudder", or even "mirth". To say that someone both sees and is non-physical appears to involve an outright contradiction.

The way out of this difficulty seems to be the idea that religious propositions are not straightforward statements, but rather "similes", "metaphors", or "allegories": Sentences like "God sees everything" cannot be understood literally, but only as symbolic pictures of something that cannot be conveyed directly. God's "seeing" would then be like the seeing that human beings perform, but also different in that it is not physical. The question is: Does this solve the problem of the intelligibility of religious statements? Does it help to understand how a non-physical being can be "watchful", "wrathful", "loving", or also "black" or "male"?

In his "Lecture on Ethics" of 1929 Wittgenstein offers the following critique of the idea that religious statements are similes or metaphors:

"... For when we speak of God and that He sees everything, and when we kneel and pray to Him, all our terms and actions seem to be part of a great and elaborate allegory which represents Him as a human being of great power whose grace we try to win, etc, etc. ...Thus in ethical and religious language we seem constantly to be using similes. But a simile must be a simile for something. And if I can describe a fact by means of a simile I must also be able to drop the simile and to describe the facts without it. Now in our case as soon as we try to drop the simile and simply to state the facts behind it, we find that there are no such facts. And so, what at first seemed to be a simile now seems to be mere nonsense"(The Philosophical Review 74 (1964): 9-10).

The gist of Wittgenstein's criticism is his reminder that a simile has to be a simile for something. Consider the following case: It is possible to describe the security system of a building as if it were a superhuman person. One could say of it that "it is behaving very oddly tonight", or, on account of its electronic eyes, that "it sees everybody entering and leaving the building". One can also say that it "admits" or "refuses entrance" to visitors, depending on whether the latter insert the proper cards into the appropriate slots. The regulating computer of the system can be said to be "startled" when fed with unforeseen data. It is clear that in this and similar cases anthropomorphic expressions like "seeing", "behaving", "being startled", etc. are not used in a literal sense, but rather metaphorically. A building's security system does not really see, etc., but rather functions in a way which in certain respects is analogous to what human beings do when they see, refuse entrance, are startled, etc. Thus, such expressions as "seeing" can be considered similes when they are used outside the sphere of those human activities in connection with which they are developed and normally learned and applied.

What is important here for Wittgenstein's contention is the fact that the metaphorical expressions can be replaced by literal descriptions of what is actually happening in the above security system. Instead of saying that it "sees" people entering or leaving one can describe the functioning of photosensitive cells, of impulses transmitted through wires to the regulating computer, and so forth. One can, in other words, describe the functioning of the security system by either using metaphorical or non-metaphorical terms, and whenever there are questions about the intelligibility of the metaphor, one can have recourse to the non-metaphorical description. It is the possibility of such recourse to non-metaphorical language which Wittgenstein finds lacking in the case of religious language. Thus, while it is clear that God does not see in the way human beings do, it is not at all clear what God does do when he "sees". In his Tractatus Wittgenstein writes: "To understand a statement is to know what is the case if it is true"(4.024). But we do not know what is said to be the case when someone says that "God sees". It follows that we cannot understand a text which says that "God sees everything". It also follows that we do not understand whatever else is said about God's activities, dispositions, and plans, as all these anthropomorphic reports fail to be translatable into direct descriptions of the alleged metaphysical facts. We simply do not know what seeing without eyes could possibly be, or feeling without a body, or planning for a future without an appropriate social and physical context. In trying to imagine such things as seeing without eyes we may momentarily call up all sorts of pictures (as when a painter represents God as a man floating on a cloud), but none of the pictures will fit into a coherent description or concept. In the end a sentence like "God sees everything" will remain a series of sounds without sense.

The matter of images is very important for religion. One could say that a great deal of the vitality of religion depends on suggestive pictures. There is not only the concept of Man as an image of God, and God as an image of Man, but the whole idea of "another world", of a non-physical realm "beyond" the physical world, is sustained as a series of images, as an elaborate metaphor. Certain burial practices are instructive here. In many cultures chieftains and warriors were buried with all their weapons, together with food and drink which would help them to survive during their journey to and in the Other World. The Vikings even fitted a boat in which the dead person was sent on his way. The burial customs indicate that both the journey and the Other World are imagined on the model of traveling and existing in this world. Life after death is pictured as something which strongly resembles the life before death. All the manifestations of life in the Other World are images of life as we know it here and now.

But there is an unbridgeable gap between the two worlds. The world in which we live and learn language is physical in many ways, a world of the senses, while the Other World is said to be a spirit world, a non-physical realm, even a world "beyond space and time". This means that there is no possible boat that could make the passage from here to the Beyond. Even the Vikings must have known that a boat and a corpse would not land in the Other World in the way boats might land on the shore of another continent. What separates the spirit world from this one obviously is something much more unmanageable and altogether different from what separates two continents. It is an ontological difference, i.e., the spirit world and this world represent two different kinds of being--more different from each other than even a rock and a mathematical equation. They are so different from each other that the whole image of a passage from the one world to the other breaks down. One can invoke the image of a passage, but it finds no intelligible application. The image can be maintained as a metaphor only as long as one does not think more closely about the details that would be involved. Metaphysical images are powerful as long as one does not seriously think.

Once certain questions are asked, the entire conception of Another World falls apart. Given that the Other World is not physical, or beyond space and time, no specification of it is possible at all. Even the description of it as being "beyond" the world is unintelligible. ("Metaphysics" derives from the Greek "meta" = "beyond", and "physis" = "nature", and from at least the Middle Ages on the word was used as a term for a world that lies "beyond" the physical reality of space and time. But it is clear that the Other World cannot lie "beyond" the physical world in the way in which Kazakstan lies beyond the Caucasus mountains.) As long as one thinks of the Other World as something like another shore or continent, or some sort of world that involves physical things, there is something one can think. But as soon as one is serious about the non-physical nature of the Beyond, all thoughts will cease, and only word shells remain. The suggestive Viking image of the journey will be without basis, and so will any other depiction of a putative transcendence. The unthinkable cannot be thought, and thus there is nothing to confirm or deny. The problem of Metaphysics ("is there another world?") has not been solved, but dissolved. "The rest is silence."

The exposure of metaphysical language as nonsense is a central part of Wittgenstein's work. It is part of an attempt to rid the mind of a host of pretentious verbiage and confused conceptual clutter in the way modernist architecture tried to cleanse the urban landscape of false facades and pointless ornaments. (The house that Wittgenstein built for his sister between 1926 and 1928 is a good manifestation of the minimalist spirit of his work.) The whole sense of his philosophy is to show the vanity of much of traditional thought: "[Philosophy] must set limits to what can be thought; and, in doing so, what cannot be thought"(Tractatus 4.114).

Yet, Wittgenstein's relation to religion is not as clear-cut and simple as some of his fellow-philosophers had wished. Although he rejected any sort of metaphysical speculation or belief, in the Tractatus he made statements as the following: "There is indeed the inexpressible. It shows itself; it is the mystical"(6.522). Wittgenstein also repeatedly read and was deeply impressed by Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief, and numerous things he said and did with regard to his lifestyle strongly suggest that he was intent on living something like a religious life. ("Wittgenstein", a comedian recently suggested, "was a saint. He was a godamn saint!")

How could Wittgenstein reconcile an obvious respect for religion and religious lifestyles with his uncompromising rejection of all metaphysics? The Logical Positivists of the so-called Vienna Circle, who based most of their anti-metaphysical conclusions on analyses from the Tractatus, did not quite know what to make of Wittgenstein's remarks about "the mystical". In conversations (later published by Friedrich Waismann) Wittgenstein offered the following explanation:

"Is talking essential to religion? I can easily imagine a religion in which there are no doctrines, in which, therefore, no talking occurs. Obviously, the essence of religion cannot have anything to do with the fact that talking occurs, or rather: if talking occurs, then this is itself part of the religious act, and not a theory. And it does not matter, therefore, whether such words are true, false, or nonsensical".

Religion, in other words, is not theory, but a practice--a way of life. It is also not based on a theory, on a belief, but emanates from a pre-rational or non-rational attitude or disposition. People first have the desire to worship, then they provide (in most cases) the stories that seemingly explain their desire. If there are doctrines, they are based on what people already do or want to do. What people do is not based on the doctrines. Throughout his work Wittgenstein always emphasizes the primacy of practice before any theory; it is part of his new and revolutionary understanding of language and philosophy.

In The Gospel in Brief Tolstoy has Jesus say: "You do not believe me, because you do not follow me". This is exactly how Wittgenstein sees the matter. The traditional understanding is that one first has to have a belief (or "theory"), and then one acts on the basis of this belief. But that, according to Wittgenstein, is rarely the case. Most of the time it is not the word that is at the beginning, but the deed. The primacy of theory in human interaction is a relatively late development, and it occurs only in special circumstances. Most of what people do happens independently of reason and language, on a more primal level.

This understanding of religion as primarily a practice, as a way of life, is at the heart of the following piece by Franz Kafka (1883-1924). It was written around 1923, and is posthumously published under the title "On Similes". It is a comment on the idea that religious statements are similes or metaphors:

"Many complain that the words of the wise are only similes, but unusable in everyday life--and that is the only life we have. When the wise man says: 'Go beyond', then he does not mean that one should go to the other side, which one could certainly do if the result of going would be worth it--but he means some legendary beyond, something we do not know, which he himself could not determine any more specifically, and which therefore is of no help to us here. All these similes really want to say only that what cannot be grasped cannot be grasped, and that we knew already. But what we labor on every day are other things.

To this someone said: 'Why do you resist? If you would follow the simile you would have become similes yourself, and thus already be free of your daily drudgery'.

Someone else said: 'I bet this is a simile, too'.

The first said: 'You win'.

The second said: 'But unfortunately only in the simile'.

The first said; 'No, in reality. In the simile you lose'."

Those who complain about the words of the wise complain about their unintelligibility, the unintelligibility of metaphysical statements. When the wise man says: 'Go beyond', then clearly he does not mean this in a literal sense--as if he had said: 'Go to the other side of the river', or: 'Go to another part of the world', or even 'Go beyond your individual interests'. To "go beyond" in the sense suggested by the wise man seems to refer to a realm which lies beyond everything that can be described in language--and thus it does not seem to mean anything at all. The difficulties concerning the determination of the "legendary beyond" are obviously the same as those arising in connection with the description of anything transcendent: the expressions used in pointing to the transcendent seem to be used like expressions used to point to some area of the world, yet it is clear that the transcendent cannot be anything like an area of the world (the "seeing" of God cannot be like the seeing of human beings). Consequently, the words of the wise do not seem to convey anything, they seem to be "useless".

The whole line of thought implied in Wittgenstein's critique of metaphysics and alluded to in the first part of Kafka's "On Similes" is challenged by the first speaker in Kafka's piece. The first speaker's reply to the foregoing complaint is: "Why do you resist? If you would follow the similes you would become similes yourself, and thus be free of your everyday drudgery". What this speaker is suggesting is to ignore the above difficulties and to follow the words of the wise, and the visions these words conjure up. The point of the words of the wise is not to give a description of a transcendent world, but rather to encourage people to act or to live in certain ways. What is intended by these words is not theory or insight, but practice.

But how can one follow statements which one does not understand? By interpreting the words as best as one can--by following the vision which (hopefully) is prompted by the words. The vision is not described by the words, but rather prompted by them. They may also be prompted by music, drugs, or a whack on the head by a Zen master. The person who "follows" the words of the wise is not to get entangled in questions of theory, in questions of the correct meaning of words. That would be a misunderstanding of what the wise man does when he says "Go beyond". Rather, the person who follows the words will act or live in a certain way--will live, for example, as if he or she expected to be soon in a very different country, face a day of judgment, etc. And by doing so the person may prompt others to do likewise, i.e., be a "simile" himself or herself.

The second speaker, not seeing the practical point of the words of the wise, i.e., still thinking that the words of the wise convey an attempted description of a transcendent world which has to be deciphered, understood, responds by saying that the advice to follow the words must be a simile, too--which is confirmed by the first speaker. What the second speaker has in mind is the idea that the advice to follow the words is as problematic as the original exhortation to "Go beyond": If one cannot understand what "the beyond" might be, then one also does not understand what it is to go there. From the second speaker's point of view everything the wise men say is language which has yet to be translated into something understandable--metaphors for which direct descriptions are needed.

The first speaker, by saying "You win", seems to agree with the second speaker: Yes, the advice to follow the words is a simile, too. The second speaker, wishing to press his skeptical attitude toward the words of the wise, opines that he is right (has won) "only in the simile", i.e., only from the viewpoint of someone who thinks that the words of the wise have a metaphorical meaning, that they imply the description of a transcendental world--which he, the second speaker, does not accept. (The second speaker, like all those who complain about the words of the wise, thinks that all metaphysical language is nonsensical.)

At this point the first speaker (by saying that the second speaker wins in reality) states that the second speaker has been mistaken all along, and mistaken in a much more fundamental way than the second speaker himself ever suspected he could be. He is right in saying that the first speaker's first remark was "a simile, too", but he is mistaken about what a simile is. Throughout the dialogue the second speaker took it for granted that a simile is at least implicitly a metaphorical description of what he wishes to see described directly, a transcendental reality. Throughout the dialogue, in other words, he took it for granted that the issue at hand was whether religious language is meaningful by being metaphorical, or nonsense. The first speaker's final remark reveals that the real difference at issue is between construing the words of the wise as described descriptions of transcendent matters at all, whether as successful descriptions or as failing ones, and taking them as expressions of a different kind all together.

According to the first speaker the words of the wise have nothing to do with describing, even implicitly, some "legendary beyond"; they are not metaphysical utterances. The words of the wise are practical: they are prompters, stimulants, or tools to activate those who are listening. To elucidate how these words can be practical without at least implying a description of a transcendental world, it might be helpful to compare them with the statues or images of God in places of worship. It would obviously be wrong-headed to look at such statues and images as attempts (either successful or failing ones) to picture God, to provide some sort of portrait the likeness of which could be tested at a future date by an act of eschatological verification. The function of such images is rather to remind, exhort, or awe people who participate in a certain way of life. They do not depict or fail to depict, but inspire.

The first speaker's final remark, in short, is a criticism of the position of the second speaker and all those who complain about the unintelligibility of the words of the wise. He points out by his final remark that all those who find the words unintelligible expect something from these words which they cannot possibly give, and which they are not intended to give. Those who look at the words of the wise as a possible description of a transcendent world commit what Analytic philosophers sometimes call a "category mistake", and the course of the dialogue in Kafka's piece shows that nothing further said by the wise will succeed in making the original words more understandable unless the above misconception is overcome, and people like the second speaker see what kind of words the words of the wise are. Recognition of the category mistake involved in the dialogue of "On Similes" could be called the point of Kafka's piece.

From Jorn K. Bramann: Traveling Light (1998)