[A Sip of Books] How Eunyu Changed the World

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This book explores how metaphors have changed the world across various academic fields and politics. It analyzes metaphorical thinking and expressions found within the theories of leading scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences according to metaphorical schemas. Author Kim Yurim, a rhetoric researcher, explains metaphorical thinking present in literary texts such as poetry and prose, as well as in children’s songs, children’s poems, popular songs, K-Pop lyrics, and various artworks from ancient to modern times. Philosopher Kim Yonggyu responds to readers’ questions like “I understand that metaphors are important, but how can I actually learn them?” by providing practical methods to acquire metaphorical thinking.

As Immanuel Kant declared in Critique of Pure Reason, the ‘thing-in-itself (Ding an sich)’ is unknowable to us. Therefore, according to Nietzsche, when we linguistically express ‘a certain thing’ as ‘what it is,’ it is actually an arbitrary and artificial act of making ‘non-identical things identical.’ In other words, all our linguistic expressions are not about calling A ‘A,’ but merely about expressing A as B. Hence, our language is not the result of logical thinking driven by the law of identity (A=A) and the law of non-contradiction (A≠~A), but rather the product of metaphorical thinking (A=B). - Volume 3, pp. 28?29

Plato argued through the easily understandable metaphor of the sun that the ultimate basis of all things is the Idea of the Good, and he also expressed this as “The world was created as a good and beautiful product by the Idea of the Good.” Thus, about 400 years before Christianity taught that “everything God made is good,” ancient society theoretically and publicly made possible the idea that “the god who governs all things and human life and death is good.” In short, through the metaphor of the sun, Plato offered unparalleled comfort, courage, and hope to ancient people who were helplessly exposed to anxiety over inevitable evil forces such as misfortune, disaster, disease, and death. - Volume 3, pp. 43?44

In relation to our story of analyzing the humanities through metaphor, there is something we must not overlook here. Why did medieval theologians, including Thomas Aquinas, equate the concept of the ‘Ladder of Nature,’ an ideal metaphor born from Greek metaphysics, with ‘Jacob’s Ladder,’ the path of salvation in Hebrew religion? Was it simply because both shared the similarity of being ladders connecting earth and heaven? No! Medieval Catholic theologians had a different earnest wish. They sought to newly explore a path of salvation from earth to heaven through human intellect (the Ladder of Nature), in addition to the path of salvation from heaven to earth by divine grace (Jacob’s Ladder). They sought an active path of salvation alongside the passive one. From this perspective, the Ladder of Nature is a humanistic metaphor created by medieval people who aspired to reach salvation through human reason and effort. - Volume 3, pp. 56?57

The World Changed by Metaphors | Kim Yonggyu & Kim Yurim | Millennium Imagination | 354 pages | 19,500 KRW

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