The potential for objects to be seen as similar cannot be...

The potential for objects to be seen as similar cannot be actualized or communicated without an active subject[^30] . In the first place, we need to invent conjectures or hypotheses and set them up against the facts. In this way, we are able to descry new resemblances between objects. On the other hand we can also try to communicate them by means of a metaphorical expression, that is, by building new language or stretching the semantic range of existing language.

To construe a metaphor, however, the receiver needs to display the same creative attitude as we have before nature. It is in this sense that metaphor is just as much a discovery as a creation. It may rightly be called, then, a creative, or poietic, discovery .

The expression ‘creative discovery’ is not explicitly mentioned in Aristotle’s Poetics , nor in his Rhetoric , though I would not consider it anachronistic to say that its meaning may be inferred from several passages, for example: ‘Metaphors must be drawn, as has been said already, from things that are related to the original thing, and yet not obviously related - just as in philosophy also an acute mind will perceive resemblances even in things far apart’[^31] .

Therefore, ‘the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others, and it is also a sign of genius[...]’[^32] . Spotting resemblances for the first time requires the invention of new points of view, of new interpretative hypotheses, of new and fallible conjectures. Similarity is not that which is at the same time in two different places or substances, but that which can be created from both by a cognitive agent.

Consequently, similarity is not a direct or ontic relationship between two or more objects, as all dynamic action is, but one established by means of a subject[^33] . In spite of the objective character of potential similarities, there are no actual ones unless they are established by a cognitive subject.

We very often find that a good metaphor, because of its creative nature, seems unpredictable yet, owing to its characteristic of objective discovery, it appear obvious to nearly everybody once enunciated. Thus, Aristotle said that metaphor gave greater clarity than anything else could[^34] and makes us see[^35] . Metaphor, Aristotle states, brings our senses face to face with reality: ‘I mean using expressions thatrepresent things as in a state of activity ( ósa energoûnta semaínei )[^36] .