Etica della metafora. Una rilettura di George Lakoff

Metaphor has a central role in the development of categories. Since it is deeply rooted in the emotional, creative, and imaginative levels of cognition, it allows man to go beyond the limits of logical and rationalistic thought. This is of foremost importance for the comprehension of human action and moral behaviour, as well as for bioethical concepts analysis. The revealing and world-disclosing meaning of metaphor show itself throughout the history of thought (Aristotle, Black and Richards, Ricoeur, Rosch, among others) but finds special attention in the studies of Giambattista Vico, and in the later studies of George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Bernard Debatin, Marcel Danesi. In conclusion, it can be said that the knowledge of the mapping-on structure of metaphor surprisingly enhances human cognition and ethical reflection, by the reorganization of the predicative architecture of human thought and acting.