The interlink between myth and wisdom in Hellenic heritage is characteristically embodied in the Platonic philosophizing as regards the education and enculturation of the human psyche. As is read in the end of The Republic , the myth of Er turns out to be a philosophical rewriting of poetry to a large degree. For it engagingly reveals Plato’s moral inculcation, philosophical instruction and poetic wisdom in particular, all of which are intended to guide human conduct along the (...) right track for the bliss of the postmortem cycle, and put philosophy learning into first priority for the choice of the future life. Moreover, the transmigrate experience in the mystic overtone of “the Orphic-Pythagorean conglomerate” is discussed with a intercultural reference to the Buddhist doctrines of samsara and karma. (shrink)

Examines the political dimensions of Aristophanes’ comic poetry. This original and wide-ranging collection of essays offers, for the first time, a comprehensive examination of the political dimensions of that madcap comic poet Aristophanes. Rejecting the claim that Aristophanes is little more than a mere comedian, the contributors to this fascinating volume demonstrate that Aristophanes deserves to be placed in the ranks of the greatest Greek political thinkers. As these essays reveal, all of Aristophanes’ plays treat issues of fundamental political importance, (...) from war and peace, poverty and wealth, the relation between the sexes, demagoguery and democracy to the role of philosophy and poetry in political society. Accessible to students as well as scholars, The Political Theory of Aristophanes can be utilized easily in the classroom, but at the same time serve as a valuable source for those conducting more advanced research. Whether the field is political philosophy, classical studies, history, or literary criticism, this work will make it necessary to reconceptualize how we understand this great Athenian poet and force us to recognize the political ramifications and underpinnings of his uproarious comedies. Jeremy J. Mhire is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Louisiana Tech University. Bryan-Paul Frost is James A. and Kaye L. Crocker Endowed Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the coeditor (with Jeffrey Sikkenga) of History of American Political Thought. (shrink)

Giambattista Vico first published his masterpiece The New Science in 1725, but it did not receive much attention from the academic world until the middle of the twentieth century. The last fifty years of academic research have witnessed a so-called “linguistic” and “cultural” turn which has revived our interest in this great Italian thinker. Looking at the Vichian scholarship of the recent past, it seems that Vico’s theory of poetic wisdom has gained a great deal of recognition and (...) deservedly so, but his concept of sensus communis is yet to be fully appreciated. The present article thus tries to discuss the constructive and imaginative function of language and culture not just through the notion of poetic logic but also in relation to that of common sense, which hopefully can shed some light on the perennial debate over the criterion of truth and aesthetic judgement. (shrink)

Combining literary and philosophical analysis, this study defends an utterly innovative reading of the early history of poetics. It is the first to argue that there is a distinctively Socratic view of poetry and the first to connect the Socratic view of poetry with earlier literary tradition.Literary theory is usually said to begin with Plato's famous critique of poetry in the Republic. Grace Ledbetter challenges this entrenched assumption by arguing that Plato's earlier dialogues Ion, Protagoras, and Apology introduce a distinctively (...) Socratic theory of poetry that responds polemically to traditional poets as rival theorists. Ledbetter tracks the sources of this Socratic response by introducing separate readings of the poetics implicit in the poetry of Homer, Hesiod, and Pindar. Examining these poets' theories from a new angle that uncovers their literary, rhetorical, and political aims, she demonstrates their decisive influence on Socratic thinking about poetry.The Socratic poetics Ledbetter elucidates focuses not on censorship, but on the interpretation of poetry as a source of moral wisdom. This philosophical approach to interpreting poetry stands at odds with the poets' own theories--and with the Sophists' treatment of poetry. Unlike the Republic's focus on exposing and banishing poetry's irrational and unavoidably corrupting influence, Socrates' theory includes poetry as subject matter for philosophical inquiry within an examined life.Reaching back into what has too long been considered literary theory's prehistory, Ledbetter advances arguments that will redefine how classicists, philosophers, and literary theorists think about Plato's poetics. (shrink)

At least since Aristotle, phronesis (practical wisdom) and poetics (making or creating) have been understood as essentially different activities, one moral the other (in itself) non-moral. Today, if anything, this distinction is sharpened by a Romantic association of poetics with inner subjective expression. Recent revivals of Aristotelian ethics sometimes allow for poetic dimensions of ethics, but these are still separated from practical wisdom per se. Through a fresh reading of phronesis in the French hermeneutical phenomenologist Paul Ricoeur, (...) I argue that phronesis should be viewed as at least in part poetic at its very core. That is, phronesis deals with the fundamentally tragic human situation of moral incommensurability, and it responds to this by making or creating new moral meaning. Such a poetics of practical wisdom helps phronesis stand up to significant and important critiques made of it by a range of modernists and post-modernists, pointing a way forward for some important contemporary moral debates. (shrink)

The management of “wisdom” has been mooted in knowledge management (KM) theory mostly in relation to what is known as the “knowledge hierarchy”. We argue that there are unquestioned assumptions inherent in KM leading to wisdom being included in KM theory because of rhetorical “urges” more than theoretical ones. These rhetorical urges impel a drive towards perfection that excludes more than is included. Our interrogation of the KM literature uncovers some of the questionable implications in understanding knowledge as (...) a resource and an asset and of understanding wisdom as a pinnacle to a knowledge hierarchy. We urge caution regarding theorising of wisdom at the top of a hierarchy, as it should not be mooted as a perfect final solution to Knowledge Management. We suggest the theorising of wisdom be opened out to its fullest “poetic possibilities”, and that attempts to close off its meaning be resisted. (shrink)

This paper intends to understand the experience of enlightenment in Zen Buddhism from a perspective of poetics. Enlightenment is understood as an existential breakthrough, which delivers people from the habitual or conventional mind set into new horizon of consciousness. This breakthrough takes place in one’s overall consciousness rather than only in cognitive thought. Therefore, it cannot be adequately described on an abstract level with a conceptual paradigm. The poetic language provides a significant alternative for capturing this leap and revealing (...) the spiritual meaning and the practical wisdom of enlightenment. Enlightenment, as concrete experiences in the “flux” of the mind, can be most directly expressed and effectively transmitted in poetic language. (shrink)

Teacher education has sought to combine the practice of teaching with the practice of thinking and most popularly through reflective practice. This refers to reflection on and in action that leads to thoughtful practical doing; praxis. In spite of its intention to develop teachers’ practical wisdom, reflective practice has become instrumentalised for the efficient achievement of educational ends without questioning whether the means of achieving them are conducive to living a good, meaningful life. Standardised modes of thinking have all (...) the more estranged teachers from thinking Being and from exploring meanings of who they are as teachers. To address this issue, this paper explores possibilities offered by poetic thinking and metaphorical thinking with reference to the thoughts of Heidegger and Arendt. The analysis of the problem of the abandonment of thinking Being by philosophical traditions as well as Aristotle’s notion of praxis and poesis have been originally addressed by Heidegger. Poesis, the act of making and bringing something forth has also been discussed by Arendt in her thoughts about metaphorical thinking and its potential for becoming something new. I argue that poetic forms of thinking enrich the debate about the relation between philosophy and teaching and are insightful for doing philosophy for teachers. They encourage teachers to make use of language in an original way to bring themselves forth as unique Beings. To practically explore the poetic possibilities in teachers’ quests for meaning, I refer to a student teacher’s writing as an example of how Being teacher can be poetically revealed. (shrink)

Alongside the tradition in Western thought which glories in logic, metaphysics, and science , a more variegated tradition of thought is to be found--that of rhetoric and of "wisdom"--whose focus is on the workings of human society and on language as its bond and instrument of change. Wisdom Speaking is the attempt to read Vico within this tradition and to see what it became in his hands. ;From implacable foes to cautious allies, science and wisdom have a (...) history of conflict and accommodation. Chapter One, "Pedagogy and Culture," intercepts this history in Vico, shows its ancient roots, and argues that a concern for its issues unifies his pedagogical and cultural theories. This argument is unfolded in the remaining chapters, which treat successively of rhetoric, pedagogy, and culture, each proceeding from a major Vichian text. ;In Chapter Two, "Philosophy and Rhetoric," the tradition of rhetoric and its manifold involvements with philosophy is first laid out, in order to look closely at Vico's own Institutions oratoriae. From its analysis the classical cast of Vico's mind is discovered, as is his steadfast concern to see rhetoric, both in its substantive and linguistic aspects, as the logic of social discourse. Plain from the beginning is Vico's appreciation for metaphor as a necessity of communication and for ingenuity as the faculty of seeing connections and thus making and remaking social structures. ;These themes are deepened in Chapter Three, "Ingenuity and Public Life," where Vico's school writings, centering in the De studiorum ratione, are made to show the nature of civil life and the sagacity needed to manage it. With the presentation of the sage as jurisconsult, as "knower of human and divine institutions," the transformation of pedagogy into a theory of culture begins. ;Chapter Four, "Wisdom and Eloquence," draws all the leads together, using the final New Science and its prior formulations to show how Vico, with philological discoveries in the Homeric poems and early Roman Law, fashioned a theory of the "poetic" beginnings of language, mind, and society; of their gradual maturation; and of the tension between their youth and maturity, thereby turning a formal understanding of culture into a functional, and preparing the way for modern social theory. (shrink)

이 연구는 비코(Giambattista Vico)와 노발리스(Novalis)의 저작 속에서 시적 사유가 철학에서 가지는 의미를 고찰하였다. 시적 사유는 철학적 사유의 원천적 특성을 지시하는 용어이다. 그들에게 시적 지혜 또는 질적 사유로 명명된 시적 사유는 객관주의의 양적 사유에 빠져서 창백해진 철학에 생기를 되살리는 계기를 제공한다. 시적 사유는 감각, 지성과 의지가 하나로 통합된 감정을 표현하는 형태이다. 객관주의는 감각과 지성을 분리하면서 감정을 사유에서 배제하여 생동성을 상실하게 만든다. 시적 사유의 감정은 개별 주관이 아니라 공동체의 공감으로 승화된 것이다. 이 감정은 철학이 신비와 경이로 부르는 초월적인 정신의 현전이며 초감각적인 현상을 (...) 해명하려는 토대이다. 철학은 공감적 세계가 존재한다는 경이에서 출발하며, 개별적인 감각에 내재하는 공감적 세계를 관조하는 보편적 사유가 된다. 공감적 세계는 초감각적인 현상으로서 정신이 대면해야 할 지평이다. 객관주의가 공감적 세계의 경이감을 배제하며 철학의 생동적 사유를 말살하였다. 철학은 시적 사유에서 잃어버린 경이를 발견한다. (shrink)

In Book 6 of his NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, Aristotle distinguishes phronesis or “practical wisdom” from poiesis or “art,” “production.” Neither deals with the universals of pure science or theoretical wisdom but rather with “things which admit of being other than they are,” “the realm of coming-to-be.” But phronesis “is itself an end,” namely “acting well”, whereas poiesis “has an end other than itself”, namely a work of art or a product. Phronesis is realized insofar as it is practiced well (...) in itself, and it involves right deliberation about goods internal to human action such as courage and justice. Poiesis is realized insofar as it produces something good beyond itself, in the making of noninternal goods such as crafts or goods imitative of action such as stories. Aristotle is here modifying Plato’s limitation of the role of the poets in his moral republic, but in a milder form that does not see the poets as actively distorting morality but rather performing a different kind of activity. Practical wisdom and poetics are both teleological practices—that is, practices aimed at some end—but the first finds its end within the practice itself, the second finally beyond it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Veils: The Poetics of John Rawls*George Armstrong KellyPlutarch recounts in Sais, a holy place of Egypt, the image of Isis, understood by the Greeks to be a version of Pallas Athena, bore the inscription: “I am everything that has been, that is, and that shall ever be: no human mortal has discovered me behind my veil.” 1 This recalls a very different god, Yahweh, whose claim is also to (...) compress all knowledge into an eternal present and whose dwelling, in Solomon’s temple, is in a special sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, also guarded by a veil.There, one might say, the similarity ends. Yahweh is a masculine diety (“the father of his people”), though imagistically he remains a space or an absence filled by a name (“I Am That I Am”) indicative of the transcendent distance of the eternal. Isis is a female shape imaging carnal knowledge behind her veil (with its Machiavellian, Baconian temptations). Her truth, as Plutarch makes clear, is driven by desire, truth being a “desire for divinity,” “a study... and work more holy than the vow and obligation of chastity or the guarding and sealing of any....” 2 The almost certain wages, however, for the would-be ravisher is unfulfillment and death, whereas Yahweh, having become the God of the Christians, promises eternal life through the sacrifice of his only-begotten son and a truth above knowledge “that shall make you free” (John 8:32). [End Page 343]To the Semitic mind the name expressed and represented the power of the person: God was present in a special way wherever the “Name of Yahweh” was. 3 The content of the Holy of Holies, originally portable in the ancient Ark of the Covenant, was the two stone tablets of the Law received by Moses at Horeb (1 Kings 8:9). God’s presence, once installed in the Temple of Jerusalem, was represented as “a cloud [that] filled the house of the Lord” (ibid, 8:10; cf. 2 Chronicles 5:10, 13). God was cloud; knowledge was duty. Of the physical place of this indwelling principle of knowledge, Jesus said (John 2:19): “Destroy this sanctuary: within three days I shall raise it up again.” The evangelist explains that his metaphor is transferred to the new Christian idea of the word made flesh. 4 John’s gospel does not cite the rendering of the veil of the temple, but the synoptic gospels all recount that it was “rent in twain from top to bottom” (Matthew 27:51, Mark 16:38, Luke 23:45) at Christ’s Crucifixion. The idea is essentially that knowledge as command and duty has been surpassed by a knowledge that is love in the crucified revelation of the Son of God. This returns us, ambiguously, to the image of the goddess Isis; for even in Hebrew scripture it is foretold: “The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me” (Song of Solomon 5:7). If there is here a clear prefiguration of the fate of both Christ and the temple, there is also an echo of the likely fate of the harlot Rahab, who let Joshua’s spies into Jericho, had God not saved her from the ruin of that city (Joshua 6:17).The purpose of this essay is not to dwell on obvious imagistic and psychological attachments between wisdom and sexual knowledge, but early notice of this liaison is needed to connect the philosophical discourse on veils with motifs disclosed in figurative literature. For the veil that hides the object of desire may also hide the reality of the name or of naming; preserving the veil may be a mode of love, just as challenging it is also. For example, when John Rawls writes: “The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance. This ensures that no one is advantaged or disadvantaged in the choice of principles by the outcome of natural chance or the contingency of social circumstances,” 5 what does his image of the veil intend to convey? What exactly is on each side of this veil? From... (shrink)

In this text, which employs the analytic-comparative method, we read the Poetics of Aristotle in a new way to take an example of translation as an artistic creation. We can present the result of the essay as a metaphor called “the art of translation”, and then we refer to four evidences which can support our metaphor: reading the text as seeing the world, understanding the meaning as perceiving the main action, representing the text as recreating an image, and word making (...) as the art of poetic. If we want to explain the useful dimension of our research, it can be said: every translation has a moral dimension which depends on its imitation of the author’s line and reader’s culture, and also has an artistic dimension that attends to the beauty of text and new vision of culture. According to Moderation theory of Aristotle, an ideal intercultural translation sees the right of author and reader by the equal criterion. Then it shows a production that is combined with “representation”, a term which can embrace the beauty and ethic in the art of translation. Keywords: poetics, representation, artistic creation, art of translation, cultural relationship 1. Mimesis in art and translation As Aristotle has said about art and poetry, they are based on Mimesis or imitation. It means that he believes art is Mimesis. But his theory about this issue is totally different to Plato’s thought. He thinks that Mimesis is not imitation of Ideas as Plato thought. Mimesis in his thought is imitation from the existence, aspect or form of things in this world. So he emphasizes that Mimesis is imitation of something or maybe happenings outside of man. After collecting all of Aristotle’s thoughts, especially about poetry, it seems clear that the imitation or Mimesis is a representation of the subject of imitation in which sometimes the subject of imitation has been represented better than its fact, like tragedy, and sometimes worse, like Comedy. It seems that we can see translation as imitation, understanding the latter as in Aristotle’s conception of art mentioned above. Indeed, a translator at the beginning of is translation process looks at the text deeply and tries to understand it as well as possible. After that, he thinks about the value of translations. In this step, if the text has repeatability in other languages and cultures, the translator starts the imitation from an original text to create another text. It seems that this process is like what an artist does to create artworks. 2. resemblances between art and translation On the basis of Aristotle’s Poetics, we want to explain some resemblances between art and translation to describe our conception of translation as an art. We think those resemblances can convince us to see translation as an art. The first resemblance between creation of artworks and translation is at the first step of them. The first resemblance between the artistic creation and translation is in their first step. Viewing the environment and finding something for imitation is the first step of artistic creation, which is like confronting and reading a text for translation. It is clear that viewing the environment deeply and reading a text carefully are necessary for artistic creation and translation because a surface of them cannot be suitable and helpful for Mimesis or imitation. The second step of artistic creation and translation is the accurate understanding of the subject of imitation. In Fact, deep and accurate understanding is necessary for exact imitation. Without comprehensive understanding, imitation of things is not possible. Both artist and translator in the process of imitation should take this step. In the other words, it seems that by deep and exact understanding they can find the direction of similarity between subject of imitation and artwork or translated text. Rewriting text in a new language like representing an image is the third step of imitation that is visible in the process of artistic creation and translation. In this step, combining their understanding and viewing the environment, translator and artist try to create the subject of imitation in a new style and a new form. The last step of imitation in artistic creation and translation is that of choosing colors in art and words and other literary elegances in translation, and using them. In this step, paying attention to details of their work, artist and translator try to create a new thing that is similar to the subject of imitation, although it is a new thing and there may be some differences between them. As was stated, the understanding of the subject of imitation by artist and translator is a very important step, in which, however, their thought of the subject of imitation is not totally the same as it, and so, during creating the new thing their understanding and thought can affect the form and the style of the new thing. 3. conclusion In conclusion, it seems that, because of the similarity between art and translation based on Aristotle’s conception of art, we can move from ethical and aesthetic functions of art, and artist’s moral duty in creating art, to the same aspects in translation and translator. In other words, based on Aristotle conception, while translator makes a faithful imitation and a creative presentation of the source, after the ethical decision to translate and promote the original text, he should pay attention to linguistic and cultural details of his translation. In this regard, while observing his audience in the target language, he also refreshes his insights and attitudes because this two-sided view, the center of gravity of moderation, will take into account the aspects of beauty and ethics in the cultural interactions of societies. References - Aristotle,, Ethics of Nicomachus, translation of Mohammad Hasan Lotfi, Tehran, New Design. - Aristotle,, About the Art of Poetry, Translated by Soheil Mohsen Afnan, Tehran, Hekmat. - Aristotle,, Fan al-Sha’r, Abdul Rahman Badawi’s research, Beirut, Dar al-Safat. - Aristotle, Sermon, Translation by Ismail Sa’adat, Tehran, Hermes. - Aristotle,, Metaphysics, Sharaf al-Din Khorasani Translation, Fourth Edition, Tehran, Wisdom. - Plato,, Period of works, translation by Hasan Lotfi, Tehran, Kharazmi. - Bermann, Sandra and Wood,, Michael, Nation, language, and the ethics of translation, Princeton University Press. - Koskinen, Kaisa,, Beyond Ambivalence; Postmodernity and the Ethics of Translation, University of Tampere. - Meschonnic, Henri,, Ethics and Politics of Translating, Translated and edited by Pier-Pascale Boulanger, Benjamins Translation Library. - Venuti, Lawrence,,The Translation Studies Reader, Routledge. (shrink)

Reconstructing Damon is the first comprehensive study of Damon, the most important theorist of music and poetic meter in ancient Athens, detailing his extensive influence, and providing the first systematic collection, translation, and critical examination of all ancient testimonia for him.

Despite his enormous bibliography of written works, Ricoeur has never devoted an entire tome to either moral philosophy or ethics per se. Three chapters of one work, Oneself as Another, do, however, encompass what he calls summarily his “little ethics.” To understand Ricoeur’s ethical project, it is important to see its genesis in his earlier anthropological studies and to follow its evolving nature into a hermeneutical poetics. Ricoeur’s ethical orientation is teleological. He makes a strong distinction between ethics and morality, (...) with ethics being comprised of three inseparable components: the “good life,” the other, and justice. The essential hermeneutical nature of his ethics becomes fully apparent in his discussion of practical wisdom. (shrink)

As with so many mystics, Alexis karpouzos intuitively know the oneness of cosmic creation and historic humanity as part of all that is and all there isn't. So, the originality of Alexis Karpouzos thought is that it crosses the most diverse fields, the most opposing philosophies, to unite them into an often contradictory and broken whole. Marx and Heidegger, Nietzsche, Freud and Heraclitus, poets and political theorists all come together in the same distance and the same unusual proximity. Alexis karpouzos (...) use Pre-Socratics philosophy and generally the ancient Greek philosophy, as well as the pre-philosophical thinking of The Upanishads, the Vedas and Buddhism in India, of Lao Tzu, of Zen Buddhism and the Taoist tradition in China, of the Arab mystics and poets, with their metaphysical religiosity as the metaphysical basis for the interpretation and understanding of the world and existence. At the same time the ancient metaphysics is connect with Hegel’s dialectical ontology and with the modern thinking of Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, and others as the interpretive context for understanding the central problems of the technical and scientific world during his time. Novalis, Hölderlin, Rimbaud, Whitman, Eliot and others show the dreamy nature of existence, the transcendence of the Cosmos, welcome the infinity. For Alexis karpouzos the combination of ancient and modern thought creates the holistic experience of universal space-time and the consciousness of the unity. The poetic thought of Alexis karpouzos is a expressions of soul's inner experiences, expression of universality. The inspiring visual images and the symbolic use of language offer a description of elevating experiences of consciousness, a glimpse of higher worlds. The philosophy of Alexis karpouzos speak to the human experience from a universal perspective, transcending all religions, cultural and national boundaries. Using vivid images and a direct language that speaks to the heart, his philosophy evokes a sense of deep communication with the collective unconscious, a sense of connection to all the creatures of the world, compassion for others, admiration for the beauty of nature, reverence for all life, and an abiding faith in the invisible touch of world. Alexis karpouzos thoughts are often terse and paradoxical, challenging us to to break out of the box of limiting beliefs and see things from a new perspective. Above all, Alexis karpouzos continually calls to us to wake up and explore the mysteries within our own selves, i.e the mysteries of universe. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.4 (2003) 376-379 [Access article in PDF] Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity. Jeffrey Walker. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xii + 396. $65.00, cloth. According to Jeffrey Walker, poetry is among rhetoric's true progenitors. Rhetoric was derived, he argues, not from the usual and oft told forensic or political sources but from an ancient argumentative mode that came to be known as epideictic and (...) that, long before Aristotle, included poetry. For Walker, this ur-epideictic was a broadly considered practice of artfully composed persuasive discourse: epideiktikon, "the rhetoric of belief and desire," as opposed to pragmatikon, "the rhetoric of practical civic business" (10). The former is primary and existed ages before rhetoric itself had a name; the latter is secondary because it depends upon and appeals to the beliefs and desires cultivated by the former. Recent discussions, as this well documented work suggests, have prepared us for a reconsideration of rhetoric's origin, perhaps even such a drastic one as this book proposes. Walker's aims, however, are not confined to revising rhetoric's history.The import of his thesis goes several steps farther to reflect his dismay with modern poetic practice and its underlying educational tradition. In that dismay, Walker's work passes beyond the revisionary and turns toward the subversive and polemic. This turn is seen best not in his thesis but in his hypothesis, his "plot": "the dominant notions of 'poetry' and 'rhetoric' that modern culture has inherited—and its notions of 'poetry' in particular—are largely products of the grammatical tradition in late antiquity" (311), a tradition which has proved stifling.In sum, Walker seeks not simply to revise history but also to adjust our educational and critical ideas and, above all, to improve the practice of poetry. In attempting briefly to set forth his thesis and hypothesis, I have surely misrepresented his manner. His stance is not exactly confrontational, although in the ultimate reckoning the reader will find that Walker pulls no punches about his aims. Revisionary, to an extent subversive, and at least somewhat polemical if not exactly confrontational—all adjectives fit, as I shall show in a review that, as I say, may regretfully damage Walker's rhetorical skills by making his case seem simpler, plainer, and far less interesting [End Page 376] than in fact it is. Indeed Walker's own skill as a rhetorician is particularly gratifying and persuasive. It's always gratifying and persuasive to find a rhetorical specialist who is adept at communication, relaxed in controversy, crafty in his use of figures (e.g., Isocrates's "Henry-Jamesian periods," 177), and sharp in his knowledge of literature.Walker's argument proceeds seamlessly and smoothly, as if offering only a kind of alternate to the usual view of our intellectual history: the nature of neither rhetoric nor poetry need be confused with the politics and taste that have necessarily driven the fortunes of each. After a brief excursus into comparative rhetoric (13-14), Walker turns his attention toward another kind of diversity, or lack thereof: the confining theoretical and critical sameness that has prevailed in our Western attitudes toward rhetoric and poetry since their ancient appearance as "conceptualized discursive practices" (17). Again, Walker's alternate to the usual view emerges as a kind of rancor-free "on the other hand" stance, or more in line with his own terminology, as the sort of tactic that from the time of the sophists has been known as making the lesser case the stronger. Nonetheless, the shortcomings of the traditionally dominant case grow exponentially until finally, as Walker's argument turns to near-polemic, they become shackles on the nature of the two arts.Crucial to his thesis is his presentation of the enthymeme. Here, more than in his discussion of epideictic, is the linchpin of his argument. At first he adverts to rhetoric as a Ciceronian combination of wisdom and eloquence or as a Quintilianesque ideal of wisdom speaking copiously, two venerable, widely accepted, perhaps even common-ground definitions that (like his idea of the epideictic) allow strategically for considerable... (shrink)

In the beginning was an aborted word. The first example of a woman’s literary criticism in Western tradition, or more accurately the first miscarriage of a woman’s criticism, occurs early in the Odyssey. High in her room above the hall of suitors, Penelope can hear a famous minstrel sing that most painful of stories, the Greek homecoming from Troy—significantly, the matter of the Odyssey itself. That is no song for a woman. She comes down the stairs to protest. “Phêmios, other (...) spells you know, high deeds of gods and heroes, as the poets tell them; let these men hear some other, while they sit silent and drink their wine. But sing no more this bitter tale that wears my heart away. It opens in me again the wound of longing For one incomparable, ever in my mind— His fame all Hellas knows, and midland Argos.”It seems a reasonable request. But her words meet an immediate brutal rebuff from an unexpected source: her own son Telemachus. “Mother, why do you grudge our own dear minstrel Joy of song, wherever his thought may lead? Poets are not to blame, but Zeuswho gives what fate he pleases to adventurous men.Here is no reason for reproof: to singthe news of the Danaans! Men like besta song that rings like morning on the ear.But you must nerve yourself and try to listen.Odysseus was not the only one at Troynever to know the day of his homecoming.Others, how many others, lost their lives!”9Men like to hear the news; women must learn not to take songs so personally! And Penelope gives in. Marveling at the wisdom of her son, she goes back to her room and cries herself to sleep.Telemachus’ words do not seem very much to the point. Penelope had not asked Phêmios to stop singing, after all, or to sing something fit for women; she only asked him to choose some other adventure. And to reproach her for not considering that others besides Odysseus had failed to come home seems irrelevant as well as cruel. The fact that others feel pain is hardly a reason for her not to feel it. Penelope cannot bear even to name her husband, but Telemachus seems to take pleasure in saying “Odysseus.” By proclaiming his own indifference to pain, he argues just like a man. And that, of course, is the point. The scene has been contrived exactly to show his new maturity. He proves himself no longer a boy in the time-honored fashion, by rejecting any tenderness of heart and by putting down a woman. Henceforth he will be equal to the suitors. Lawrence Lipking is Chester D. Tripp Professor of Humanities at Northwestern University and director of the program in comparative literature and theory. He is the author of The Ordering of the Arts in Eighteenth-Century England and The Life of the Poet, which won the Christian Gauss Award of Phi Beta Kappa in 1982. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “The Marginal Glass” and “Arguing with Shelly” . The present essay was originally given as a lecture at the School of Criticism and Theory in the summer of 1982. It is part of a book, Abandoned Women and Poetic Tradition, which is to appear in 1984. (shrink)

Commentary on a beloved ancient philosopher of Zen by a beloved contemporary master of Zen. Eihei Dogen was a thirteenth-century Buddhist poet-philosopher and founder of the Soto school of Zen. Famously insightful and famously complex, his writings have been studied and puzzled over by generations of students. Kosho Uchiyama was a beloved twentieth-century Zen teacher and author of over twenty books, who here addressed himself head-on to unpacking Dogen's wisdom for a modern audience. Translators Tom Wright and Shohaku Okumura (...) present three fascicles of Dogen's monumental Shobogenzo, or Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: "Shoaku Makusa" or "Refraining from Evil," "Maka Hannya Haramitsu" or "Practicing Deepest Wisdom," and "Uji" or "Living Time." For each one, they lovingly translate Uchiyama's thoughtful commentary on the piece. At turns poetic and funny, always insightful, this is Zen wisdom for the ages. (shrink)

'The interpretours of Plato,' wrote Sir Thomas Elyot in The Governour, 'do think that the wonderful and incomprehensible order of the celestial bodies, I mean sterres and planettes, and their motions harmonicall, gave to them that intensifly and by the deepe serche of raison beholde their coursis, in the sondrye diversities of number and tyme, a forme of imitation of a semblable motion, which they called daunsigne or sltation.' The image of the planets and stars engaged in an ordered and (...) measured dance is an ancient one. Plato articulated it in a passage in the Timaeus, where he likened the apparent motions of the planets and stars to 'choreiai'. Through the centuries the analogy has challenged Plator's interpreters to define and elaborate the image. Miller has examined a range of poetic and philosophical texts influenced by Plato cosmology, and has discovered frequent comparisons of the cosmic order to 'daunsigne.' He suggests that the vision of the cosmic dance did not develop at random in Western intellectual history but originated in a specific philosophical context and passed through stages of evolution that reflect Gnostic, Christian, Stoic, and Neoplatonic responses to Plato. He argues that the historical variations of the image were often closely related to adaption or criticisms of Plato's theories of visual perception and intellectual vision. The dance, in conjunction with images such as the Great chain of Being and the Lyre of the Heavens, became the dominant image of a peculiarly Late Antique world-view which Miller has called the 'poetic universe'; a world where metaphors, metonymies, and personifications could exist in fact as well as in word. The result of Miller's analysis is vast in scope. The nine chapters of the book each present a thesis on a particular author, but all function together like links in a chain. Miller has been described as 'an historian of visions'; the book has been likened to Auerbach's Mimesis. It is a remarkable contribution to an understanding of the complex interaction of ideas and images in time. (shrink)

Giving permission to embodied knowing to inform nursing research methodology: die poetics of voice(s)This paper originated from my experience of trying to find an authentic way to research women's experience of the pre‐menstruum. I describe how personal change informed an evolving methodological approach. This change occurred when I felt tension between two strong voices. Conflict and insecurities originated from the pressure of my academic voice to conform to the dominant culture in what often seemed a disempowering way; a way that (...) denied my body voice by emphasizing theory over experience. The construction of a poetic of voice (s) to illustrate how I eventually found an embodied voice is used to provide space for the reader's own interpretive process. The evolving embodied voice integrates my experience as a woman/nurse/researcher, validating my knowing bodily, practically, experientially and academically that I was able to help the participants to disclose their embodied knowing. This approach has wider implications when considering the value nurse researchers and academics give to embodied wisdom. (shrink)

This book is designed to appeal both to those interested in Roman poetry and to specialists in ancient philosophy. In it David Sedley explores Lucretius ' complex relationship with Greek culture, in particular with Empedocles, whose poetry was the model for his own, with Epicurus, the source of his philosophical inspiration, and with the Greek language itself. He includes a detailed reconstruction of Epicurus' great treatise On Nature, and seeks to show how Lucretius worked with this as his sole philosophical (...) source, but gradually emancipated himself from its structure, transforming its raw contents into something radically new. By pursuing these themes, the book uncovers many unrecognised aspects of Lucretius ' methods and achievements as a poetic craftsman. (shrink)

Knowing Words will be welcomed by sinologists, classicists, and scholars of comparative philosophy and literature.

This essay reintroduces Rhetoric as the principle art for giving emphasis and importance to contested matters; in other words, for making things matter. In a speculative reading of the Aristotelian rhetorical tradition, Aristotle's interpretations of magnitude, contengency and practical wisdom are critically examined from both an aesthetic and an ethical-political point of view. The concluding discussion attempts to apply these same concepts to a growing dilemma in the present age. The dilemma is that monumental changes in scale have all (...) but eroded the prospects for engaged encounters with contemporary contingency. It remains the challenge of rhetorical practice to reframe actions and events so that they and we may hold some hope for an engaged civic life. (shrink)

A study of the strain and striving in the heart of human finitude, Brian Treanor’s case for melancholic joy uses the resources of hermeneutic philosophy and the arts to galvanize a hopeful counterweight to despair. Though evil and suffering are tragically ingrained in the tissue of lived experience, and entropy and loss buffet our projects and aspirations, there remains in the landscape of being a durable mystery of goodness, beauty, and grace. Treanor pits such mystery against our calcified pessimisms and (...) arid theodicies by drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s vision for a “second naiveté” of faith, gratitude, and moral responsibility that is worthy of living in – and up to – an order of things which is dark yet shining. Melancholic joy is neither resignation nor optimism, but an attuning praxis that can be realized through responsive modes of vitality, love, attention, and tragic wisdom. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Richard Shusterman T. S. ELIOT ON READING: PLEASURE, GAMES, AND WISDOM Eliot frequently speaks of poetry as essentially a game or amusement whose first and foremost function is to give pleasure. "The poet," says Eliot, "would like to be something of a popular entertainer... would like to convey die pleasures ofpoetry.... As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career but a (...) mug's game" (TUPTUC, p. 154). ' Surely much ofthe point and appeal ofthese remarks is their deflationary contrast to the overlofty claims made for poetry since romanticism, claims which continue to be heard in Arnold's ideas of poetry as criticism of life and surrogate of religion and which extend to modernism with Richards's claim that "poetry is capable of saving us." In mordant debunking of the poet's putative status as world legislator, prophet, and savior, Eliot says he would be pleased to secure for the poet "a part to play in society as worthy as that of the music hall comedian." But Eliot's idea of poetry as an amusement or game is much more than an ironic rhetorical ploy against romantic attitudes. It contains a positive and complex view of what poetry is and how it satisfies. Eliot wants to remind us of "that simple truth that literature is primarily literature, a means of refined and intellectual pleasure."2 However, he also realizes that this truth is really not all that simple to understand or elucidate properly; for it does not mean (though it might seem to suggest ) that literature is a mere means to obtain some external end of pleasure. Nor does it mean that in aiming essentially at pleasure, literature is confined to satisfying our sensual or emotional faculties, and is 2 Philosophy and Literature therefore not significandy connected with improving thought or communicating wisdom, for the pleasure is described as intellectual pleasure. Because of the likely misunderstandings that it is apt to provoke, Eliot's claim that literature is a refined game, that "poetry is a superior amusement," is not confidendy offered as an adequately "true definition, but because if you call it something else, you are likely to call it something still more false" (SW, p. ix). But what substance or value is there in Eliot's preferred view? The idea of poetry as a superior game or amusement is developed in many ways throughout the Eliot critical corpus. We cannot consider them all, but the first we should consider concerns the character of pleasure or enjoyment derived from poetry. If poetry is a refined game, and since games are activities, the pleasure (enjoyment) of poetry would be that ofan activity rather than that ofa pleasant sensation. Eliot's idea of poetic pleasure is thus fundamentally Aristotelian.3 Such pleasure is not a separate sensation or pleasant feeling external to and identifiable apart from the game played, but rather represents the attendant zest or satisfaction with which the game is played or the activity pursued. For Aristotle, "pleasure completes the activity" by the dual and reciprocal action of making it more rewarding and thus promoting it. Our pleasure intensifies our interest in the activity which makes us better pursue it, while displeasure conversely impedes it, as does submitting to the alien pleasures from other activities. If the pleasures of different activities can conflict and impede their respective activities, then these pleasures must be distinguishable and are so in terms of the activities to which they attend. Our enjoyment of an activity thus logically depends on the constitutive structure of that activity and is inseparable from it. We therefore distinguish the pleasures of different games by the different game-activities to which they are bound. One may enjoy tennis, cricket, and football and perhaps feel similar pleasurable sensations from each. But the enjoyment of each game is clearly distinguishable and understood not in terms of these sensations but in terms of the different activities which constitute the formal object or ground of that pleasure. Different games or, more generally, different activities are differendy enjoyable, and each has what Aristotle calls its own "proper pleasure." One could not get the pleasure of playing tennis from playing... (shrink)

Living in a province dominated by powerful oligarchs, Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) concluded that political philosophy should work to undermine aristocratic authority and prevent political devolution into feudalism. Rejecting the possibility that the free market could successfully instill civil behavior, he advocated for a strong central judicial system to work closely with citizens to promote stability and justice. This study puts Vico in conversation with other Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, Rousseau, and Mandeville to show how his alternative warrants serious consideration. (...) In contrast to scholars who read Vico's New Science as a defense of the imagination, this study casts his account of poetic wisdom politically as an epistemological critique of the aristocratic mentality. Myth and Authority argues that Vico's depiction of pagan religion is a refined attempt to explain how oligarchy maintains its stranglehold on power. While Western civilization did not follow the path Vico suggested, it may now be more relevant as concerns grow about the increasing influence of the wealthy on civil institutions. (shrink)

In his analysis of the social and economic conditions of intellectual activity in ancient Greece, Gentili argues that the value of poetry underwent a notable change in the late archaic period. Poetry came to be produced within a contractual relationship between patrons and poets, it became a commercial good available to the one who could pay for it and its value was expressed no longer by honouring the poet but by paying for his product. At the time of Solon and (...) Theognis the producers of poetry had been aristocratic members of the polis giving political advice to their peers and gaining renown by the quality of their advice. Yet Simonides and Pindar wrote under different social conditions. Gentili writes: Fully conscious by now of the dignity and importance of his role, the poet also becomes aware of its [i.e. poetry's] ‘commercial’ value. He puts his own sophia at the disposal of the highest bidder, thereby creating a basis for the tendency to regard wealth and poetic ‘wisdom’ as interchangeable moral equivalents. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.4 (2006) 89-103 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Philosophical AestheticsDonald Phillip VereneIs there an aesthetics of philosophy? Does philosophical discourse have a foundation in sense and sensibility? If the answer to these questions is affirmative and there is in some sense a philosophical aesthetics, what conclusions might be drawn for philosophical education?Put another way: Does philosophy require the power of the imagination and the product (...) of this power-image? Or is philosophy the product of the pure concept, the rational idea? Does philosophical reason rest upon a logic that resides in thought alone that is expressed essentially in principles and arguments disconnected from images and sentiment?The Philosophical ImaginaryThe French philosopher Michèle Le Doeuff says:Whether one looks for a characterization of philosophical discourse to Plato, to Hegel or to Bréhier, one always meets with a reference to the rational, the concept, the argued, the logical, the abstract. Even when a certain coyness leads some authorities to pretend that they do not know what philosophy is, no agnosticism remains about what philosophy is not. Philosophy is not a story, not a pictorial description, not a work of pure literature. Philosophical discourse is inscribed and declares its status as philosophy through a break with myth, fable, the poetic, the domain of the image. 1Le Doeuff continues:If, however, one goes looking for this philosophy in the texts which are meant to embody it, the least that can be said is that it is not to be found there in a pure state. We shall also find statues that breathe the scent of roses, comedies, tragedies, architects, foundations, dwellings, [End Page 89] doors and windows, sand, navigators, various musical instruments, islands, clocks, horses, donkeys and even a lion, representatives of every craft and trade, scenes of sea and storm, forests and trees: in short, a whole pictorial world sufficient to decorate even the dryest "History of Philosophy." 2Le Doeuff points to Hegel's work as an example of the claim that the sole form of philosophy is thought. Yet the works of Hegel, like those of Plato, are full of images. Plato and Hegel are masters of metaphor. One can say of them what Aristotle says in the Poetics, that "the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others and it is a sign of genius. For the right use of metaphor requires an eye for similarities in dissimilars." 3 Despite his mastery of metaphor, in the Republic Plato uses his doctrine of eidos to criticize the power of eikon to present truth. Hegel, in the Phenomenology, uses his doctrine of the Begriff to claim that the Bild cannot produce the science of the absolute. Plato and Hegel say one thing in their texts, but in the texts themselves they do another. Plato's dialogues are filled with metaphors and likely stories from the Ring of Gyges to the metaphor of the Sun to the tale of Atlantis, as are Hegel's works, from the "night in which all cows are black" to the phrenological skull to the owl of Minerva that flies only at the falling of dusk.How are we to comprehend the extremes of philosophical doctrine on the one hand and the discourse that expresses it on the other? Is the discourse simply the outer shell of the doctrine, inessential to its truth, or does the doctrine itself require for its truth all that is needed for its proper statement?I wish to seek the answer to this by connecting Plato to Hegel, using Vico as an intermediary, in particular Vico's conception of la sapienza poetica (poetic wisdom) and his conception of the universale fantastico (imaginative universal). My claim is that philosophical discourse, as well as philosophy itself, depends upon an aesthetic that cannot be overcome by reason, that there is a philosophical imaginary that necessarily accompanies philosophical rationality. The concept, the idea, always has a shadow, a doppelgänger through which... (shrink)

Paradox and origin : on the structure of legal communication -- History, law and hermeneutic self-reference -- Self-mastery and the conversion of force : an ethics of freedom -- The social metaphysics of law : Vico's communicative body and the paradoxical grounding of freedom and authority -- The creative formation and foundation of society's law : on the nature of poetic wisdom -- Between freedom and authority : Vico's history of roman law -- The technique of command : (...) on the problem of freedom in Weber's sociology of law. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Literature: Four Studies puts forth the question of the extent to which philosophers must go to school with the poets. It begins with a new interpretation of the famous Platonic quarrel with the poetic wisdom of Homer. It brings this question forward through the humanism of thinkers of the Italian Renaissance and the German Idealism of Hegel. It then treats the relation of philosophy and literature in four ways by considering philosophy as literature, philosophy of (...) literature, philosophy in literature, and philosophy and literature. In regard to the first of these, it discusses Jorge Luis Borges’s The Immortal, to the second James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, to the third Carl Sandburg’s epic prose poem The People, Yes, and to the fourth, Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools. This work demonstrates that in an area of thought often dominated by fashionable doctrines of literary interpretation, the great works of literature and philosophy remain as permanent residents of our thought and imagination. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the relationship of myth with the ancient regime and on the transformation of poetic wisdom into poetic politics. The basic idea of this study claims that the political life in ancient communities was been projected into a mythology, and, in turn, a mythology often legitimizes political life. By reading Plato’s Timaeus and Novalis’ Heinrich von Afterdingen, this study aims to bring out the connection between the ancient and modern political regimes.

Este artículo explica la síntesis viquiana de filosofía y filología partiendo de la metaffsica de la mente y del concepto viquiamo de mente. El desarrollo histórico de la naturaleza humana yace en la base de la teoria del conocimiento de Vico. El axioma verum ipsum factum y la sabidurla poética son las claves hermenéuticas del mundo civil.This paper explains the Vichian synthesis of philosophy and philology starting from the metaphysics of mind and Vico’s concept of mind. The historical development of (...) the human nature lies on the bottom of Vico’s theory of knowledge. The axiom verum ipsum factum and the poetic wisdom are the hermeneutic keys of the civil world. (shrink)

This article aims to clarify two different uses of the term poetics in Giambattista Vico: as an adjective of the word wisdom in poetic wisdom, and as a noun, poetics in its broadest sense. This is done in order to understand thematic and historical developments of poetics in Vico and thus to explain his intention to recover, in times of abstract and reductive rationality, a poetic rationality able both to permeate the practical and to restore the (...) lost unity between theory and praxis, between poetics and praxis. The proposal is not to go back to the times of poetic wisdom, but to recover a poetic dimension of existence. (shrink)

In his seminal book on the historical periods of Western attitudes toward death, Philippe Aries describes four consecutive periods through which these attitudes evolved and transformed. According to him, the historical attitudes of Western cultures have passed through four major parts described above: “Tamed Death,” One’s Own Death,” “Thy Death,” and “Forbidden Death.” This paper, after exploring this concept through the lens of Persian Poetic Wisdom, concludes that he historical attitudes of Persian-speaking people toward death have generally passed (...) through two major periods. The first period is an amalgamation of Aries’ “Tamed Death” and “One’s Own Death” periods, and the second period is an amalgamation of Aries’ “Thy Death” and “Forbidden Death” periods. This paper explores the main differences and similarities of these two historical trends through a comparative review of the consecutive historical periods of attitudes toward death between the Western and Persian civilizations/cultures. Although both civilizations moved through broadly similar stages, some influential contextual factors have been very influential in shaping noteworthy differences between them. The concepts of after-death judgment and redemption/downfall dichotomy and practices like deathbed rituals and their evolution after enlightenment and modernity are almost common between the above two broad traditions. The chronology of events and some aspects of conceptual evolutions and ritualistic practices are among the differences. (shrink)

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to present the stylistic and thematic analysis of Geez poetry, in a way that examines the profound and complex meaning that it carries.Research Methodology: The article methodology consisted of qualitative research methodology and a purposive sampling was used in field work. Secondary data was also obtained from books and scholarly journals and duly acknowledged. Idiomatic and literal translation methods were used, with special emphasis on meaning rather than form. The translation from Geez to (...) English was conducted by the researcher and content analysis was used to analyze the data.Findings: The poems revealed a rich, valuable aesthetics and dynamic changes taking place in the cultural mold of the Geez speaking society. It has also revealed that a huge amount of Geez oral poetry still remains unrecorded. It has also shown that Geez oral poetry is not being learned by the young generation and this could lead to a loss in cultural practices embodied in it.Unique Contribution to Theory, Policy and Practice: The article will contribute to the preservation, documentation and research endeavors being undertaken by researches, educators as well as policy makers involved in areas related to the study of the classical language of Geez. This is because none of Geez poetry has been composed, written or recorded in any parchments or books by the churches at all. Hence, it is only too obvious that a massive amount of poetic wisdom has been lost that future generations could have benefited from. (shrink)

Francesco Botturi, professor of the philosophy of history at The Catholic University of Milan, is the author of several essays on Vico; in this book he takes a larger look at Vico's entire work through the guiding thread of the concept of wisdom. The idea of wisdom is the "foundation of Vico's practical philosophy", a kind of wisdom whose locus is between poetic wisdom and reflected wisdom, between imagination and concept. From a genetic point (...) of view, poetic wisdom upholds a primacy, but philosophical wisdom retains the structural primacy. According to Botturi, Vico, who wants to maintain the unity of these forms of wisdom, tries to keep them together by placing them in temporal succession. Both forms of wisdom are "complementary and irreducible paths of Vico's metaphysical transcendentality", and both constitute wisdom synchronically. Botturi articulates Vico's thought in four chapters on the concept of wisdom: chapter 1, "The Ideal of Wisdom and Epistemology of the True"; chapter 2, "Poietic Wisdom"; chapter 3, "Wisdom as Justice"; and chapter 4, "Communication of Wisdom.". (shrink)

Ricœur n’a cessé d’explorer les liens de la littérature et de la philosophie, du poétique entendu au sens large et de la philosophie pratique. Ces réflexions ont fécondé ses analyses de façon majeure, le concept d’identité narrative – l’adjectif s’entendant aussi dans sa dimension littéraire – en étant un des centres. Mais cette valorisation de la linéarité du récit a parfois donné l’impression d’avoir davantage mis en avant l’importance du roman, délaissant le rôle de la poésie et du théâtre. Cet (...) article se propose d’explorer les liens mutuels entre la sagesse poétique et la sagesse pratique en leur redonnant toute leur place. Il le fait en suivant la manière dont le philosophe a donné une place à la poésie, singulièrement celle de Rilke, et en mettant au jour les différentes stratégies argumentatives (l’exergue, la correspondance, le commentaire) par lesquelles la poésie, et surtout le psaume, éclaire et enrichit la compréhension de ce/celui qui s’engage dans l’action. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, Metaphysics 2.3, 995a7–8, there are people who will take seriously the arguments of a speaker only if a poet can be cited as a ‘witness’ in support of them. Aristotle's passing observation sharply reminds us that Greek philosophy had developed within, and was surrounded by, a culture which extensively valued the authority of the poetic word and the poet's ‘voice’ from which it emanated. The currency of ideas, values, and images disseminated through familiarity with poetry had (...) always been a force with which philosophy, in its various manifestations, needed to reckon. As a mode of thought and discourse which proclaimed its aspiration to wisdom, philosophy could not easily eschew some degree of dialogue with an art whose practitioners had traditionally been ranked prominently among the sophoi. Even Aristotle, who keeps aloof from the assumption that philosophical contentions stand in need of poetic support, cites and quotes poetry regularly in his own writings in ways which indicate the influence on him of a prevailing mentality that regarded poets and philosophers as pursuers, up to a point at least, of a common wisdom. (shrink)

Andrey Bely was an important member of the Russian symbolist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This essay presents a summary of the development of his ideas regarding the origins of image and symbol in poetic language. For Bely language organizes chaos. The poet finds images in the internal world of dreams. Music has an organizing power beyond that of language, which language attempts to imitate. Under the influence of Vladimir Solovyov he looked to the union (...) of Divine Wisdom or Sophia with the Eternal Logos as the principle behind symbolic images. Later, under the spell of Rudolf Steiner, he found the source of inspiration in the eternal dwelling of the Logos from which the human ego descends into flesh. The task of the poet is to recover the memory of the time before he left the realm of the Logos and to return to that realm by participating in Christ's ascent to the Cross. The autobiographical novel Kotik Letaev gives an account of recovering memory from before birth and the need to be joined with Christ crucified. (shrink)

Andrey Bely was an important member of the Russian symbolist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This essay presents a summary of the development of his ideas regarding the origins of image and symbol in poetic language. For Bely language organizes chaos. The poet finds images in the internal world of dreams. Music has an organizing power beyond that of language, which language attempts to imitate. Under the influence of Vladimir Solovyov he looked to the union (...) of Divine Wisdom or Sophia with the Eternal Logos as the principle behind symbolic images. Later, under the spell of Rudolf Steiner, he found the source of inspiration in the eternal dwelling of the Logos from which the human ego descends into flesh. The task of the poet is to recover the memory of the time before he left the realm of the Logos and to return to that realm by participating in Christ's ascent to the Cross. The autobiographical novel Kotik Letaev gives an account of recovering memory from before birth and the need to be joined with Christ crucified. (shrink)

This is a book of guidance rooted in the wisdom of ancient China. Bestselling author Deng Ming-Dao provides key poetic lines that distill the essence of Taoism, organizing them in the form of a journey. The material here is drawn from a variety of sources, including, the Yijing, 300 Tang Poems, and the full text of the Daodejing. As Deng Ming-Dao notes, "We walk the Way each day. We don't know what's ahead, and so it's helpful to have (...) the wisdom of others to guide us. They have left us a message to encourage us. They have spoken of the joys, griefs, and purity that we should embrace. Like good pathfinders, they give us direction and prepare us for what we might encounter. They let us walk for ourselves. We have a wonderful companion for the journey." This profound collection of ancient wisdom is the resource for those looking for daily sustenance and guidance on the path of life. -- inside front cover. (shrink)

This article proposes to analyze the relations between ethics and the poetics of testimony. It does so by testing Paul Ricoeur’s analyses of testimony with the literary work of the Belarusian Nobel Prize winner Svletana Alexievitch. After having shown why witnessing occupies a type of expressivity that is singular in contemporary times, and then having been surprised by the strong links that unite witnessing and the experience of evil, Alexievitch’s work is chosen to explain what the resource of the (...) class='Hi'>poetic could be, in the face of the question of evil. Ultimately, the consequences are drawn for the development of a practical wisdom in which testimony would be in a good place. (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 155–158 Michel Serres. Biogea . Trans. Randolph Burks. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing. 2012. 200 pp. | ISBN 9781937561086 | $22.95 Conveying to potential readers the significance of a book puts me at risk of glad handing. It’s not in my interest to laud the undeserving, especially on the pages of this journal. This is not a sales pitch, but rather an affirmation of a necessary work on very troubled terms: human, earth, nature, and the problematic world we made. (...) It is this world that aspirates the silence (so to speak), and therefore the subject which, along with the development of the “made world” exports the excess augmentation of the cosmically missing, this silence of the natural, et cetera. Had we learned from Locke that lesson of “labor,” to consume what we need… but perhaps we need more than what matters? Serres’ Biogea has several functions on this manner, if it is indeed a book to be consumed. First, readers searching for novelistic entertainment have a place to dwell. Biogea deserves a place in your back pocket; biographical generosity and poetic fluidity should satisfy most textual fetishes. For lay philosophers who want to refresh their acumen, Biogea deserves a place on the book shelf, one already reads a sorely needed postmodern tune-up here. Serres’ style is clearly French; he leaves few cheese crumbs on his words, rather preciseness and breathing in the work give way to a sweeping manner that breaks the narrative line of sight. A circular narrative and anachronistic fragmentation of terms allows an abyssal atmosphere to swell, if only to pump into the book the externality of its broader text. Biogea aspires to a higher standard and the book, at times, is thinking this negentropic problem too. Univocal, the publisher, has crafted a book appropriate for the hands to hold and the translations are an achievement of an otherwise difficult writer to translate. Terms are the conditions of a broader text. It is important to note that Serres’ content is as much a thinking of terminal ports. There is a regard for the transportation technology of the written word. For me, this is the mark of genius, a craftiness that tells of a book device that I may trust. Serres is an accomplished thinker and a necessary voice to check the putative trendiness of anti-postmodernist and market-driven theory of endless cultural liquidation. Offering interventions on subjectivity as an open system we are given a chance to affirm the human, not merely to discard it, but to engage its poetic image emotion, the calibratory silent sense of the analogic world; the terms on which we base our efforts. 1 The human is the center of its own negation, constantly mediating it. Something deeper at stake appears in the work then, and it is quite obvious from the onset. Certainly, a book is an intensification of possible text and those who brought this actual book into existence have captured a rarity in regards to the subject matter and artistic accomplishment. I mentioned terms as conditions, so let us understand Biogea as bio-yea, a yes to bios . An affirmation of living and accepting presence for all of its defiance of images, words, and things temporal. Therefore Serres’ existence and its existants plays parts; out of linearity and still like a porous bone pumping blood it manufactures into the fleshy life it becomes. Starting from a man named silence chaos emerges, or the man “Old Taciturn” takes up a journey anticipating a great flood. In other words, a development akin to the one in Genesis. In dealing with this ancestral occupation, fusing Genesis with contemporary philosophical terms, Serres initiates this anachronistic fragmentation under the forming subjectivity of his own autobiography. This mutation in the open system is precisely one of Serres’ terms. There an abyss is at work, stated, but also measured by heels on the ground—the abyss dispatching earthen tensions, that which plays our tunes, that which we abide by and recognize in volcanoes, rivers, oceans, earthquakes and weaponry in the battles of the world. Set in later stages of the book, such tensions are harnessed through scientific principles in an attempt to unify the terms of natural force if only to terminate the world. Thus the elevation of the earth into the world is clearly set forth. Here already, and few pages in, a resonance is set forth under appellations such as the river Garonne, a subjectivity as much as it is inhuman, the river is the inhuman that makes us human. I get the sense that Serres is taking up a challenge issued by Wallace Stevens; namely, that the great poems of heaven and hell have been written, but that only the poem of the earth has resisted composition. 2 On this level we cannot avoid the killing factor of silence, given that our cognition blocks its pure, radical obliteration. Thus a silence of attunement to the earth is in a novel dialectic of the rithmic and rhythm. A technological world, a triumph of termination is set forth. If a text imposes its will given the reader who authorizes it, it is made to convey or convect a presupposition to a reader or its inhabitant(s). Text is therefore both, in-content, contenting, contentedness, and in reading it, a way to navigate self-destruction (dis-content). Here then would one note that the “inhuman” reveals itself, “an aperiodic rhythm of lovers and beloved…the sea as our friend…but as our enemy…maternal vivifying sea.” The sea is an open book, or vaginal birth canal, where the engagement of text comes forth: “…woman sea, open vulva.” One sees like the sea, but only after it, when the uninhabitable truth of inhabiting it switches the polarity of the sailors soul: “I was seeing like the sea” (9-11). In other words, we are invited to embrace the nonsense of the visible. At this point I am taken to Jean-François Lyotard’s work The Inhuman , specifically the first entry on negentropy that would be congruent with Serres’ thematic. 3 The human being exports, deports, or transplants its relation through text, through the system— and this is its sense or relation to silence, to music. Unaware of Serres’ proximity to this work, the concept of gender interrelation as regards a solar catastrophe runs clear. It would be, on this basis, that Serres references his peers, the other texts that, as mentioned above, are discarded in philosophy today. For students of philosophy what we have here is perhaps a gift, a needed project. If silence and death are at work, there is a political valence to deal with, and here, much like the domain of the text and the dominion of the reader, we confront the world of natural, fluid violence. The anti-postmodernist critique is in part based on a weak idea that the loss of ideology, of a world vision, motivates the “correlationist” project. 4 Serres seems to offer another way to view this when he notes that whereas persons “sometimes kill,” it is clearly “the collective” that “always kills” (17). What is the collective today, if not an organizing function we never see yet acts in its favor in the name of truth? One feels a sense of enigma here, if only to link to what Stevens remarked of communism as a “grubby faith,” providing this applies for capitalism as well, namely any ideology of progress overly interested in absolutes. Here we get the sense that the inhuman, silence, this type of killing, always killing, could not be matched by human-made, political dynamos. Or that if it comes to an equilibrium, a catastrophe is never too far from us to read with our heels. We are left to note that the forces of nature presuppose and permeate political systems, the more these systems obtain force, the more the system takes upon itself the proper name of nature that motivates its dissemination, albeit falsely. This note, that in an age of ecocide and technological captivity (sustainability and transparency) political regimes won’t grow our soul-learning ears any larger than our tongues, stands clear to us. The promise of technological desubjectification is here pushed aside. Regarding politics, Serres illustrates this fact: Where did this corpse come from? Who was it? Who killed it? I don’t know. I won’t try to find out. I refuse to get vengeance for it. And I only see Garonne. For our victims, today, are the rivers, too. Their waters have irrigated my life, enchanted my thought, invigorated my body; I’ve known them to be threatening, untamable, as dangerous as the sea when it rages. Yes, murderous. They decided to control their courses; dams, sometimes senseless, destroying sites and valleys, reduced entire populations to servile displacements; programs for the irrigation of thirsty farmland, often beneficial of course, completed their drying up.(22) Serres enters into his idea concerning the captivity of language from the natural into a world system: For thousands of years, we have been licking things with our tongues, covering and daubing them so as to appropriate things for ourselves. If language boils down to a convention, this convention took place between the speakers without consulting the thing named, become as a result the property of those who covered it in this way with their drawn or voiced productions. Malfeasance analyzes these acts of appropriation. Thus every inert object, every living thing as well, sleeps under the covers of signs, a little in the way that, today, a thousand posters shouting messages and ugly riots of color drown, with their filthy flood, the landscapes, or better, exclude them from perception because the meaning, almost nil, of this false language and these base images forms an irresistible source of attraction to our neurons and eyes. This appropriation covers the world’s beauty with ugliness. (38-39) Technological concealment coming to bear, we begin to get a sense of another commentary on the condition of sensing, driving home the necessity of a text dealing with such subject matter to be what its terms insist. Thus toward new openings: The new opening. As low beneath our feet as you like, the Biogea opens us to another space, high enough for us to be able to acquire a wisdom there, that of redeveloping this same place differently from our fathers, this place that’s still politically cut up by old hatreds, beneath the flood of tears and blood that we call history. Without this soft place, spiritually very old, but newly conceived in this way, without the juridical construction of a common good, opposed to our filthy ownership, I don’t see how our planet, hard, will survive. Hardness that depends on a softness, material belonging that depends on this temporary rented location (51). Serres enters into a summit on the content and the structure of his work. Archimedes is brought in with the concept of three volcanoes. Meaning fire, but as well earth, water, air. For it was Archimedes’ war machines that sought to lift the earth, thus bringing in the question of principles of science: “can a principle be invented while controlling its consequences?” (66-7). May the earth be put in a sentence, terminated by terminology, appellations, gone wild? By means of these element-dominating laws, this old physicist began to tear nature away from the ancient myths; by a strange return, today we’re plunging our successes back into the anxieties and terrors from which that ancient physics was born. Yes, our new history of science and technology is plunging, today, as though in a loop, into the fundamental human myths from which Empedocles’ first laws came. A major progression and a regression on the nether side of the origins. Consequently, the contemporary time requires that we try to return to that unity in which the principles of hate and love are at the same time human, living, inert and global. We will never attain a deontology of our knowledge and actions without thinking the subjective, the objective, the collective, and the cognitive all together simultaneously. Here, hate and love are the result of these four components.(71) Working then on the concept of fire-starting mirrors to the atomic annihilation of the Second War, Serres works into the subjectivity in question on the matter of rhythm—say rithmic— precisely at that point: Knowledge is changing today. The all-political is dying; the monarchy of the sciences said to be hard is coming to a close. The science of the things of the world will have to communicate just as much as the things of the world do, which do it much better than humans do, who don’t always want to do it. Let’s celebrate two changes this morning. The first one strikes a new blow to our narcissism. No, knowledge and the world don’t resemble our analytical enjoyments of refined cutting up, of endless debates and of exclusions full of hate. They, on the contrary, form a bloc and a sum, alliance and alloys. Uniting the fields of knowledge among themselves the way the things are connected among themselves, the second newness puts into place sets united by interlacing, webs and simplexes that combine with the things of the world, themselves combined, the combined knowledge that understands them.(130-1) Biogea closes on its opening flood thematic, approaching the initial telos of Genesis. Here the trees are brought into a position with atmosphere, the opaque abyssal reservoir, the tomb of the sun, sea in the polarity of the earthen heaven and hell. The poem of the earth then is silent but deadly, indeed, as funny as that phrase is, mainly a tomb gas. The meaning of the living and the non-meaning of things converge in the muteness of the world; this meaning and non-meaning plunge there and come out, the ultimate eddy. Mundus patet: through a fissure, through an opening, a fault, a cleft come noises, calls as small as these apertures. I’m listening, attentive, I’m translating, I’m advancing in the scaled-down meaning and science. Mundus patet: should the world open greatly, it will launch me into its silence. The totality remains silent. Knowledge expanded in elation. White origin of meaning, fountain of joy. (198) Final Remarks One test of a review is the long term trajectory the referee thinks the book will have. I see Serres’ text lending greatly into the vision of Biogea . In fact, in the vision of the novel inquiries of Stephen Jay Gould’s work there is something to be thought on the level of the individual and the species; namely, that humanity and its uniqueness is in its deferral, its thinking and naming, a thinking surrounded by silence that filters into everything, that pulls us through the world, the kinetic pulse we recognize, and all of that we cleave away in the base philosophical maxim of difference itself. Unique individuals are spatial creatures: we dwell, and we ought to get good at it. Yet this is an imaginative space that, if you are crazy enough to believe it, de-term-ine the conditions of its own terms. That is why we are not merely creating spaces on the acceleration of time, or so this ignoramus thinks, to accidentally transcend. Imagination already has this insatiable silence that we drink up and fail to manifest. Space is timeless. The imagination itself, shared by humans for themselves, their objects, and the species as a whole, is a non-defined space of relation; a whole human trajectory as part of nature, and part of worlds that are the other side of thinking nature, the consequence of it, at least our attempt to do so. Our survival is based on our deliberation, our caution, our natural deconstructive sense toward this silence that is already part of the song, sung, singing of this century without end. Good books will let us inhabit this space and recognize a form of life. Serres’ text moves toward dwelling, as noted, in masterful and accessible ways. The pitched battles are the falling replays of anemic and dead politics. As soon as we realize there is humanity, we may be able to enjoy the end of it, our inhuman capability of listening to silence. NOTES 1. See Michel Serres. The Parasite . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2007. 2. Wallace Stevens, “Imagination as Value” [ca. 1945], in Collected Poetry and Prose . New York: The Library of America. 1997. 724-39. 3. Jean-François Lyotard. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time . Trans. Geoffrey Bennington & Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1992. 4. See the introduction: Quentin Melliassoux. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency . Trans. Ray Brassier. New York: Continuum. 2008. EDITOR'S NOTE: This review was updated on August 8, 2012. Substantial edits include block quotes from the book under review as well as the inclusion of comments from the author. (shrink)

In the first part of the paper, the author tackles the question of troubadour subjectivity. The subject of the poem announces the losing of oneself, abandonment of the existing state of affairs and self-surrender, but sees no tragedy in it, for a source of genuine joy. Love deserves sacrifice, it is worthy of all human desire, but it is not a conventional love, neither marital nor family love, rather, it is an ethereal and poetic love for Our Lady. For (...) everything that may be related to such love, we believe that a far more appropriate translation of gaya scienza is a joyful lesson, for it signifies far more to mark the troubadour point than the usual [Croatian/Serbian] translation cheerful doctrine. What is notably striking about the inherited solution is the complete misapprehension of the troubadour point, as the word science can only be associated with the troubadour wisdom if it is previously put in quotes. In short, the author concludes that a democratic scientist is happy and optimistic, while Nietzsche’s »joyful« scientist does not hesitate to show his anguished face publicly. The troubadour’s anguish for distant and unrealizable love is peculiarly close to Nietzsche’s suffering in a modern world that seems unable to live in a world of a distant and absent God. (shrink)