Dear Gary F.,
I would add that it is not only metaphor that, “reverses the process by
unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer and stranger
relationship,” as you put it. This is also the essence of aesthetic
experience. Dewey termed this “perception,” where the qualitative immediacy
of the object determines the interpretation, rather than the habits of
interpretation brought to the situation by the interpreter, which Dewey
termed “recognition.” In Dewey's use of these terms, recognition is
arrested perception, where full openess to the object is foreclosed by
habituation. Fuller openness to the qualities of the object can indeed
unmake a familiar distinction to reveal a richer and perhaps stranger
relationship, such as Peirce’s example of snow in shade as actually
appearing blue.
Aesthetic experience in this sense, as a potential element in all
experience, involves an openness, a vulnerability to experience.
Gene
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