Descartes constructeur ou la métaphore dans la scène de pensée du texte philosophique

Abstract

The role of metaphor in philosophical discourse is a question as old as philosophy. This article considers and relays some of Paul Ricoeur's and Jacques Derrida's propositions on the issue. It tackles the intimate relation linking philosophy to metaphor, in a perspective which do not assimilate them. The consequence of an assimilation would be an impossibility for philosophy to preserve any singular criterion. Its general claim is to consider that metaphors are an element articulated to the ''scene of thought'' of the philosophical text. This way, their connection with philosophy appears: they give rise to thinking, or not, according to the way they affect the feelings of the reader watching the scene, according to the sensations of tension they leave in him. These tensions push us to interrogate ourselves, activate and feed thoughts. Considered in this way, metaphors of construction, at the core of René Descartes’ Discourse on the Method, can fully show their strength. They make feel the unbearable tensions the master builder have to live with; they trouble; allow the ambiguities of the Cartesian Project to permeate the reader; and make him think.