Tentative Thoughts after Reading Ricoeur's The Rule of Metaphor"

I’ve finished The Rule of Metaphor—a book whose conclusions regarding philosophy and metaphor are—one must use a metaphor—enlightening.

One can take from this work of philosophy an understanding of the necessary failure of philosophy which is an inevitable effect of the limits of language, the inability of language to articulate even once the thing the speculative philosopher desires/attempts to articulate. Metaphor is the conduit from the known to the unknown. Metaphor always erases what it writes as it writes, leaving only its trace. The end of philosophy leads to poetry—the next rung on language’s ladder. Poetry, the cauldron of metaphor, too must fail. The final step to being is silence. Knowing, inarticulate, smiling silence.