The Ancient Quarrel Continues:

Are Poetry and Philosophy Inseparable or Irreconcilable?

 

 

Introduced by Micah Stover

 

 

Notes on the 26/2/03 meeting of HKPC's Kowloon Branch

 

 

Reported by Steve Palmquist (moderator)

 

 

Micah began her introduction (click here to view the handout) by confessing that she approaches philosophy as a poet and finds it most engaging at those points where it deals with the same issues that arise in good poetry. She examined the very different ways three philosophers dealt with this intersection. Plato argued that poetry should be banned from the just city, because as a form of divine madness, it tends to divert people’s attention away from the truly philosophical task of getting to know the world of forms. Although the two may appear to be irreconcilable for Plato, in Book X of Republic, he challenges poets to prove him wrong if they can. Aristotle, by contrast, saw poetry as beneficial inasmuch as its appeal to emotion can have a cathartic effect. Poetry itself is an imitation-based skill, whose meaning needs to be analyzed philosophically before its value can be properly understood. Aristotle does not seem to go so far as to say that poetry is essential to philosophy. But Nietzsche does take this extra step. In Birth of Tragedy he portrays poetry as the great healer of the existential troubles of human life: the Apollonian (philosophical) and Dionysian (poetic) characters must be held together if either is to attain its fullest potential.

 

During the question time, Micah clarified a number of important points concerning each of the three philosophers under consideration. Nietzsche regarded poetry as an exceptional form of art, much more useful to philosophy than other forms. Aristotle’s position seems better than Plato’s because he is more open to the possibility of learning from poetry. Although poetry and justice are irreconcilable in Plato’s Republic, this book may not represent Plato’s most mature thinking on the subject. The key distinguishing feature in good poetry is that it expresses an experience that might be called an “epiphany” of something ultimately real. Ideally, good philosophy ought to do the same.

 

One of the most interesting insights during this part of the meeting related to the significance of the type of poetry Plato was objecting to. Micah pointed out that for Plato “poetry” meant primarily the works of Homer. Homer’s poetry reflected the traditional polytheistic religion of Greece, a tradition Socrates had been found guilty of questioning, resulting in a death sentence. Republic was written shortly after Socrates died, and can therefore be regarded as a social commentary on the conditions that led to this tragic event. As such, Plato’s objections might not have been directed against all poetry whatsoever, but only to poetry that expresses an unquestionable tradition, off limits to philosophical inquiry.

 

After Micah clarified that one need not be a poet in order to understand poetry, but that poets are more likely to be able to appreciate good poetry, we discussed the nature of the overlap between poetry and philosophy. One participant suggested that the overlap is merely coincidental: philosophical issues sometimes arise in poetry, but are not essential to it; rather, the essence of poetry lies in a particular “techne” that is quite different from philosophy. Micah disagreed, arguing that philosophical questions constitute the very essence of good poetry and that technique (skill) is only part of the poet’s work. Poetry is the one form of art that shares this necessary overlap with philosophy because it shares with philosophy a common medium: language. Along these lines another participant observed that the product of poetry and philosophy is greater than either on its own; once something is expressed in words (as poetry or as philosophy) it can be taken up and enriched by expressing it again from the other point of view. Micah therefore concluded the question time by emphasizing that in her view grappling with philosophical issues is an essential feature of good poetry. For all the best poets, such as Emily Dickenson, the way they write takes on a philosophical significance even at points when their subject-matter may not be explicitly philosophical.

 

Before dividing the meeting into small groups, I reminded everyone to consider the questions Micah had prepared for us at the end of her handout. In the small group I joined, one member began the discussion by suggesting a definition of poetry as the heightened use of language in order to convey feeling, using words to convey meanings they do not normally convey. When poetry is used as part of a philosophical debate, he claimed, such language must be translated back into the normal meanings of words before it can be admitted. Others objected, however, pointing out that philosophers do sometimes quote poetry without ever giving such an explanation, and that such quotations may serve a useful purpose in an argument. Nietzsche in particular wrote in a very emotional way, appealing at times directly to the gut. Yet his writing is still generally regarded as philosophical. One person argued that philosophy and poetry are inseparable, but only because philosophy encompasses everything. The one who proposed the initial definition responded that poetry is not irreconcilable to philosophy, but as poetry, it is irrelevant, because emotion must be separated from intellect before any intellectual content it may convey can be properly understood.

 

I then suggested the following framework for dealing with this issue: poetry can be defined as meaning-making (because the Greek word from which “poetry” derives actually means “to make”); philosophy’s corresponding task is meaning-explaining. If the philosopher attempts to explain meaning without also (to some extent) making a new meaning, then the resulting explanation will be meaningless. Hence philosophy must involve a poetic act at some point in order to be meaningful. Likewise, one test of the genuineness of a work of art could be whether it conveys meanings that can be explained philosophically. With this view of reciprocal interdependence in mind, one participant asked an interesting (though perhaps unanswerable) question: If society as we know it were to break down, would we depend more on philosophy or on poetry? Without directly answering this question, another group member noted that the structure of a poem is its scientific aspect, which is also necessary in order for a poem to be great.

 

During the concluding discussion session, one participant shared the view that poetry is inseparable from philosophy, but only because philosophy addresses the totality of human concerns. He added that any true art form must include some philosophy in order to qualify as art. Another participant agreed with the former, but questioned whether this implies the view Micah seemed to have defended, that philosophy itself is quintessentially poetic. Micah then cited Dickenson’s Hummingbird poem as an example of how poetic craft can produce the same feeling in the reader as is produced by a good philosophical insight. Another participant agreed with Micah, arguing that philosophy and poetry share the quality of being engaged in a “dance with mystery”: philosophy plays with meaning in hopes of applying it in a specific way, whereas poetry engages in the dance merely in order to enjoy the process.

 

At this point someone else shared with the whole group my distinction between poetry as meaning-making and philosophy as meaning-explaining. The possibility was raised that philosophical analysis might be able to make new meaning on its own. This led to a brief discussion of whether or not “analysis” implies a closed system of meaning. If dividing a whole into its constituent parts is conceived as a process that could reveal a previously unknown synthesis, then the two sides to this debate found themselves largely in agreement. Poetry emphasizes the synthetic (imaginative) aspect of linguistic meaning, whereas philosophy emphasizes the analytic (logical) aspect. The two are both necessary, though we pursue them in different ways and with different faculties of the mind. An interesting closing remark was made by someone who brought the discussion back to Plato, claiming that Plato’s skepticism regarding poetry’s usefulness was based on a very similar distinction: philosophy is most important because it puts us into direct contact with the real world; logical analysis removes us one step from that world; synthesis (as in physical science) removes us a further step; and artistic expression takes yet another step away from the realm of reality, making it less trustworthy than philosophy.

 

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The following suggestions were given for future topics:

 

-       The meaning of dreams

-       The meaning of time

-       Intellect vs. emotions

-       The meaning of life

 

 

Return to the home page of HKPC's Kowloon Branch.

 

Return to the main map of Steve Palmquist's web site.

 

This page was uploaded on 21 April 2003.