The aim of the research is to determine the meaning of metaphor for identifying the metaphysical foundations of aesthetics, to analyze how the ways of this definition are drawn in the philosophy of Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, Mamardashvili. Their works help to understand how a metaphysical metaphor is constructed, its aesthetic matrix. Since ancient times, aesthetic thought has considered the concept of the language of metaphor with its double ambiguity, various metaphorical figures as structures internally connected with categorical reflection on (...) the system of art, and the metaphor itself was conceived as a form of semantic perception and the creation of an artistic landscape. Revealing the place of aesthetics in the structure of metaphysics, the author examines the aesthetic role of the metaphorical within metaphysics, the complexity of the relationship between the concept of metaphor and the fundamental metaphysical category of being In the world scientific literature, there is an infinite number of works in which metaphor is considered as a rhetorical figure. But studies of metaphysical metaphor are rare. For the first time in the Russian-language literature, the article outlines approaches to the aesthetic understanding of metaphysical metaphor, as they developed mainly in the philosophy of Heidegger and Derrida. In their concepts, the intuition of the metaphor itself as metaphysics is revealed, the idea of the metaphysical metaphor of light is revealed, the understanding of the transcendental ego as a metaphor is revealed, and the concept of the substance of the metaphor itself is clarified. Special attention is paid to the aesthetic and metaphysical interpretations of metaphor in modern Russian philosophy.--. (shrink)