Metaphors are incredibly seductive: they effortlessly slot into the brain, allowing us to seemingly make quick sense of difficult ideas.
But we should heed Nietzsche's warning … that metaphors illuminate as they conceal:
“What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.”
As much as could be said of Nietzsche’s sister, seen here as a vital old woman in her late eighties, wearing granny glasses and a bonnet welcoming Hitler to the Nietzsche Archives in 1934. She was a dupe to contrived hollow tribute and apparently not a reliable custodian of her brother's legacy.
