Impossible Metaphors or Why 'Beautiful' Can't Be Used Metaphorically

In this paper, I show that De Clercq's account of the metaphorical uninterpretability of aesthetic terms is flawed. What is required for metaphorical interpretability, on my view, is the joint satisfaction of two conditions: (i) multi-dimensionality and (ii) the presence of a default dimension. Aesthetic terms lack metaphori- cal readings because they fail to satisfy (ii), even though they sat- isfy (i). The account I offer is preferable to the accounts offered by individual theorists mentioned in the paper as it is a more predic- tively adequate and uniform account of the phenomenon of impos- sible metaphors in general.