SCARED TO DEATH (Smiertelna groza)

Accepting the idea - as expressed by Lakoff and his successors - that metaphors constitute the primary forms of language, the author analyses narrative content concealed in metaphors, whilst in parallel demonstrating a metaphoric(al) status of theoretical notions (both in humanities and natural sciences). An account of profits and losses ensuing from omnipresence of metaphors, which is not infrequently imperceptible, leads one to the conclusion that theory should be treated as a kind of practice which - as a metaphor - is akin, by means of family similarity, to ideology. Theory will always remain a practice being rooted in empiricism, and deprived of objectivism which is otherwise ascribed to it.