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.
