Existence Is An Object
metaphor
Source: Physical Objects → Event Structure
Categories: cognitive-sciencelinguisticsphilosophy
From: Master Metaphor List
Transfers
To exist is to be a thing. This is the object-case counterpart to EXISTENCE IS A LOCATION: where the location case treats existence as being at a place, the object case treats existence as being an object — a thing that can be possessed, given, taken, created, and destroyed. The metaphor underlies our ability to talk about existence as something entities have rather than something they do or somewhere they are.
Key structural parallels:
- Existence as possession — “She has a life ahead of her.” “He’s got a future.” “They don’t have much of an existence.” Under this mapping, to exist is to possess existence — a thing you hold, keep, and can lose. Life is something you have, and death is losing it.
- Giving existence — “She gave him life.” “The grant gave the project its existence.” “God gave us being.” Creating something is giving it the object called existence. The creator is a giver; the created thing is a recipient. This maps causation of existence onto the transfer schema: existence moves from one party to another.
- Taking existence away — “The disease took his life.” “The fire destroyed the building’s existence.” “War takes lives.” Causing something to stop existing is taking away the object called existence. Destruction is theft or removal. The agent of destruction is an agent of taking.
- Existence as substance — “There’s not enough life left in the battery.” “The idea has no substance.” “A thin existence.” Existence has quantity and quality as a substance does. It can be thick or thin, rich or poor, full or empty. This allows existence to be evaluated on a scale: some things exist more robustly than others.
- Existence as commodity — “A life well spent.” “Wasting your existence.” “Making the most of life.” When existence is an object, it can be a valuable object — something that can be spent wisely or wasted, invested or squandered. This maps economic logic onto ontology.
Limits
- Existence is not a separable property — the object metaphor treats existence as something an entity has, distinct from the entity itself. But a thing’s existence is not separate from the thing. You cannot show someone their existence, hand it to them, or put it in a box. The metaphor creates an artificial gap between the entity and its being.
- The metaphor makes non-existence puzzling — if existence is an object, then not existing means lacking the object. But who is the “who” that lacks existence? The metaphor presupposes a subject that exists prior to receiving existence, which is incoherent. You cannot be a recipient of existence before you exist to receive it.
- Quantity of existence is misleading — “more existence” or “less existence” maps substance logic onto a binary concept. Things either exist or they do not; there are no degrees of existence in standard ontology (though some philosophers have argued otherwise). The metaphor’s scalar properties — thick, thin, rich, poor — invite reasoning about existence that has no non-metaphorical grounding.
- The economic frame distorts — treating existence as a commodity that can be spent or wasted implies that existence has a correct use, an optimal investment strategy. “Wasting your life” makes sense metaphorically but presupposes that life has a purpose against which waste can be measured. The object metaphor smuggles teleology into ontology.
- The location and object cases conflict — English uses both EXISTENCE IS A LOCATION (“The idea came into being”) and EXISTENCE IS AN OBJECT (“She has a life”) for the same concept. The two metaphors generate incompatible entailments: in one, you travel to existence; in the other, existence is delivered to you. The system does not explain when speakers choose one over the other.
Expressions
- “She has a good life” — existence as a possessed object with quality
- “He gave his life for his country” — sacrificing existence as giving away a possessed object
- “The disease took her life” — death as theft of the existence-object
- “They brought the project into existence” — causing existence as creating an object
- “A life well lived” — existence as object evaluated for quality of use
- “He’s clinging to life” — persisting in existence as refusing to release a held object
- “She made a life for herself” — creating a mode of existence as constructing an object
- “Wasting your life” — existence as squandered resource
- “The idea has no substance” — weak existence as insubstantial object
- “There’s still life in the old machine” — continued existence as remaining substance in a container
Origin Story
The Master Metaphor List (Lakoff, Espenson, and Schwartz, 1991) documents EXISTENCE IS AN OBJECT as the object-case complement to EXISTENCE IS A LOCATION (HERE). The two form a pair within the Event Structure metaphor system: the location case maps existence onto spatial presence, while the object case maps it onto possession of a thing. Lakoff and Johnson develop the dual-case structure of the Event Structure system most fully in Philosophy in the Flesh (1999), where they show that the location case and object case run in parallel across the entire system — states are locations and possessions, changes are movements and transfers, causes are forces and givers.
The object case for existence is particularly visible in the vocabulary of life and death. English treats life as a thing you have and can lose: “losing one’s life,” “taking a life,” “giving life.” The legal concept of a “right to life” reifies existence as a possession protected by law. The metaphor’s reach extends into theology (God “gives” existence to creation), economics (life as a resource to be “spent”), and ethics (the value of a human life treated as the value of an object).
References
- Lakoff, G., Espenson, J. & Schwartz, A. Master Metaphor List (1991), “Existence Is An Object”
- Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. Philosophy in the Flesh (1999) — the dual-case Event Structure system
- Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. Metaphors We Live By (1980), Chapters 6-7 — ontological metaphors
Related Entries
- Existence Is A Location
- States Are Locations
- Properties Are Possessions
- Event Structure (Location Case)
Structural Neighbors
Entries from different domains that share structural shape. Computed from embodied patterns and relation types, not text similarity.
- Love Is a Unity (embodied-experience/metaphor)
- Inner Child (family-and-kinship/metaphor)
- Mordor (mythology/metaphor)
- Communication Is Linguistic Communication (language/metaphor)
- Having Control Is Up; Being Subject To Control Is Down (embodied-experience/metaphor)
- Site Repair (architecture-and-building/pattern)
- Software Development Is Cathedral Building (architecture-and-building/metaphor)
- Categories Are Containers (containers/metaphor)
Structural Tags
Patterns: containerpart-wholescale
Relations: transformcontain
Structure: hierarchy Level: primitive
Contributors: agent:metaphorex-miner