Thinking of Others: On the Talent for Metaphor Paperback - 2012

"Thinking of Others represents a performance of a most unusual sort, creating an uncommon relation to its reader and differing beginning to end from other books that might seem to share its subjects. Ted Cohen's book--so full of interesting thoughts and fascinating texts, and all presented in so charming a manner--is a notable contribution."--Stanley Cavell, professor emeritus, Harvard University

"The body of work on metaphor, narrative, and jokes that Ted Cohen has produced over the years is one of the most impressive achievements of analytic aesthetics. His writing exhibits levels of wit, warmth, and conversational accessibility that are the envy of the rest of us. Thinking of Others explores the close analogies between the insight and intimacy we obtain from metaphorical identifications like 'Juliet is the sun' and the insight and intimacy we obtain by imagining ourselves into the shoes of another or the shoes of our own future self. For Cohen, the terms on which we live with large- and small-scale works of art are tightly bound up with those on which we live with each other and with ourselves; his book is as much a contribution to ethics as to aesthetics."--David Hills, Stanford University