228 / 298
Horst Steinke
228
foundations for this by lexicon and grammar» (
ibid.
, pp. 5-11, 29-35, 94-115,
200, 201-209, 209-223, 223-232, 233).
425
TTP
, p. 88, third paragraph to p. 89, second paragraph (inclusive), end-
ing on p. 90.
426
There is a historical dimension to Spinoza’s choice of exemplifying se-
mantics by the literal/metaphorical framework rather than by other aspects of
semantics/pragmatics. As E. Camp points out, philosophers of the early
modern era often denigrated metaphor, as Hobbes did in
Leviathan
(1651),
Chapter 8, and J. Locke, in
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1690),
Book 3, Chapter 10. Camp contrasts this with the modern re-evaluation of
metaphor: «Metaphor potentially involves the most creative aspects of human
imagination and cognition» (Id.,
Metaphor in the Mind: The Cognition of Metaphor
,
in «Philosophy Compass», 1-2, 2006, pp. 154-170, pp. 154, 166). More gener-
ally, it has been argued that «metaphor […] could be fundamental to language
(and thought)» (S. Guttenplan,
Objects of Metaphor
, Oxford, Clarendon Press,
2005, p. 246). For Spinoza, since metaphor is associated with “imagination”,
and “imagination” belongs to the first kind of knowledge, metaphorical lan-
guage necessarily fell under, and fit into, his discussion of linguistic data to be
assembled by means of, and for the purpose of, the first kind of knowledge.
As a subspecies of metaphor, Spinoza also deals with anthropomorphisms;
the cognitive and linguistic complexity of anthropomorphizing, alas, has been
recognized only recently, as in B. C. Howell,
In the Eyes of God: A Metaphorical
Approach to Biblical Anthropomorphic Language
, Eugene, Oregon, Pickwick Publi-
cations, 2013; P. Herrmann - S. R. Waxman - D. L. Medin,
Anthropomorphism is
not the first step in children’s reasoning about the natural world
, in «PNAS», 107, 2010,
22, pp. 9979-9984; A. S. Heberlein - R. Adolphs,
Impaired spontaneous anthropo-
morphizing despite intact perception and social knowledge
, in «
PNAS
», 101, 2004, 19,
pp. 7487-7491.
427
The study of cognate languages came into its own only decades later,
particularly by Johann David Michaelis (1717-1791), for which see Legaspi,
The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies,
cit., pp. 86-95, including the
résumé: «That Michaelis overestimated the relatedness of these languanges is
clear» (
ibid.
, p. 91). The languages referred to are Syriac, Aramaic, Ethiopic,
Samaritan. (Other cognate languages, including Ugaritic, Akkadian, Moabite,
were not yet discovered). However, the importance of knowledge of cognate
languages was already recognized and put to use in the mid-1600’s, the most
impressive product of which, likely, is the so-called “London Polyglot Bible”
(1653-1657), presenting parts of the Bible in Arabic, Aramaic, Ethiopic,
Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Persian, Samaritan, and Syriac. Coptic and Armenian
Scripture texts would have been included also if copies of manuscripts had