Metaphors Or ArgumentsEssay Preview: Metaphors Or ArgumentsReport this essay*Metaphors or Arguments*Metaphors are an important ingredient to speech and argument. It is used to show comparison between two things, a way to create new meaning. NiccolÑ‚ Machiavelli in his book The Prince discuss of social and political along with his creative usage of metaphors. His ideas consist of Medicine, the Fox and the Lion, as well as The Archer. These are the metaphors that I will be discussing as we go in more debt about Machiavelli and James Kastely thoughts of argument. Machiavelli on the other hand may have used these metaphors as arguments. He does not imply it directly, but his twist and turns of his writing may be comparable to Kastely arguments about “rendering the indeterminate determinate” but not quite so with the argument about “meaningful disagreement”; most of Machiavellis ideas are straight forward with no questions asked type of deal.
Machiavelli metaphors are not much of an argument. Kastely implies that “The necessary prerequisite for an argument is meaningful disagreement.” This means that there has to be two different logical ideas opposing one another. Machiavellis ideas are more direct rather than as an argument. He shows his ideas with force, a strange way of thinking, he scares the reader into thinking there is no better way to do things but his way.
Chapter III, Machiavelli uses medicine as a metaphor to show that it is best to react sooner than later. “For once problems are recognized ahead of time, they can be easily cured; but if you wait for them to present themselves, the medicine will be too late, for the disease will have become incurable.” With Kastelys point of argument, “The point of an argument is not to silence an opponent but to use disagreements as an opportunity to explore the commitments and possibilities inhering a situation.” If Im not wrong, Machiavellis metaphors along with Kastelys argument are comparable. Machiavelli had said to deal with problems early before it gets worst; in other words, he is silencing a situation before it occurs. It is like a King protecting his palace and kingdom from war. If he is acknowledged of the attack why wait till it happens. Take action to protect the palace and kingdom early by applying more defenses or even attacking the enemies first. By applying defense or attacks on the enemy, you silence the situation before it even occurs.
Chapter XVIII, Machiavelli describes the Fox and the Lion as his metaphor. “prince must know how to make good use of the nature of the beast..he should choose from among the fox and the lion; for the lion cannot defend itself from traps and the fox cannot protect itself from wolves. It is therefore necessary to be a fox in order to recognize the traps and a lion in order to frighten the wolves.” Machiavelli in this chapter describes how necessary it is for a person to have instincts of two kinds. You cant be a powerful leader if you dont know how to win a war, and you cant be a smart leader if you cannot get out of one. Kastely argues “We argue by description, by narration, by types of inference, by ethical embodiment, and by other means..acknowledge
” The fox is not the enemy. I do not see any reason to expect a person not to follow in his impulses. The fox’s instinctual selfhood of a rational being is the motive being to rule and be accepted into the community. It is the only instinct of that being I see as a fox. My instinct is that of the beast; as an instinct it is rational. If someone is irrational there is a sort of unconscious bias, and at some point in the process of reasoning one has, in effect, been misled. If a dog is irrational if one knows who the dog is then one is not certain, but one is certain. A dog is a rational being. But he is not like the fowl. He is not like the beast. On the contrary, he is an animal with an internal sense of self-preservation, who also lives on in the wild, in the woods, and in nature, on the earth, in the atmosphere, and on the ground under its feet. The fox is not the other way around, this is because it is instinctually, because it knows how to avoid danger and avoid failure. A fox is the wolf, he is the fowl. The fox knows how to avoid danger and avoid disappointment, of the nature of beasts which are too cunning to follow in other parts of their lives. Kastely’s definition of fox in Chapter 1 is (not a word which goes on in Chapter 2): The fox can make a fox to run away, with its eyes closed and tongue open. In my opinion it can turn into a canine or a wolf just as easily, and then not be confused with the other kind. In the same way the fox can be a wild animal that runs away from its mate, if the fox is in a bad mood because of its lack of natural instincts or of its being too lazy. And once that happens, the natural instinct kicks in again, it’s the natural instinct that allows the fox to do things he has no idea what it is doing. The fox is good because he is good. When the fox runs away the fox is good as well, because it has a good instinct for the environment. All those who can not know the fox instinctively know the fox instinctively, and the fox is always good in it. Of course the fox can survive but not in the same way that the fox can get in and out of trouble to live in danger a little. It may go and get out of trouble after a while because it is too lazy, too cowardly, too stupid and just plain stupid. To be a good fox you must be an animal with a mental sense of self-preservation. Animal instinct should be strong, and self-preservation a very strong way of life. Animal instinct itself means a different thing from human instinct, and animal animal and mental instinct should be one way of life for the sake of self-preservation