本文旨在探討已故的當代法國哲學家保羅．呂格爾《活的隱喻》。本文基本上依循著呂格爾書中八篇研究的順序，而以呂格爾的主要關懷為焦點，即以隱喻、二級指稱與詩歌語言等相關的真理及本體論問題，試圖掌握該書要旨。本文認為，呂格爾首先回溯到亞里斯多德時代同時涉足《修辭學》與《創作學》的隱喻概念，指出隱喻原有的豐富內涵，而後開始以他自身關聯著亞氏《形上學》而對《創作學》的詮解得到的詩歌語言概念為基本立場，對比檢視亞氏之後隱喻理論的偏枯發展，並從檢視之中進一步顯豁自己的隱喻理論。依呂格爾所言，這是一個由古代修辭學經由符號學與語義學再到詮釋學的研究過程，然就如呂格爾常用的一個詞語「迂迴」(detour)一樣，這也是一個迂迴的研究過程。又，就書中多次徵引並詮釋亞里斯多德在《創作學》與隱喻有關的論述而言，呂格爾《活的隱喻》應可說是對亞里斯多德隱喻理論的現代詮釋。

The purpose of this paper is to investigate La métaphore vive by Paul Ricoeur. It tries to grasp the motif of the work by concentrating on the main concern of Ricoeur, which includes the ontology and truth in metaphor, second-level denotation of discourse and poetic discourse. It points out that Ricoeur first returned to the notion of metaphor in Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics to unpack its original and abundant meaning. By the insight of poetic language he got from his comparison between Aristotle's Poetics and Metaphysics, Ricoeur then examined the alienation of the notion of metaphor after Aristotle and finally illustrated his theory of metaphor. According to Ricoeur, the process in his book began with classical rhetoric, passed through semiotics and semantics, and finally reached hermeneutics. It also suggests that Ricoeur's work is a contemporary interpretation of Aristotle's idea of metaphor.