The Ancient Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry

Explores the pervasiveness of poetry's impact on philosophy and, conversely, how philosophy has sometimes resisted or denied poetry's influence.

Raymond Barfield (Author)

9781107000322, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 31 January 2011

288 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.5 cm, 0.52 kg

From its beginnings, philosophy's language, concepts and imaginative growth have been heavily influenced by poetry and poets. Drawing on the work of a wide range of thinkers throughout the history of Western philosophy, Raymond Barfield explores the pervasiveness of poetry's impact on philosophy and, conversely, how philosophy has sometimes resisted or denied poetry's influence. Although some thinkers, like Giambatista Vico and Nietzsche, praised the wisdom of poets, and saw poetry and philosophy as mutually beneficial pursuits, others resented, diminished or eliminated the importance of poetry in philosophy. Beginning with the famous passage in Plato's Republic in which Socrates exiles the poets from the city, this book traces the history of the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry through the works of thinkers in the Western tradition ranging from Plato to the work of the contemporary thinker Mikhail Bakhtin.

1. Socrates, Plato and the invention of the ancient quarrel
2. Aristotle, poetry and ethics
3. Plotinus, Augustine and strange sweetness
4. Boethius, Dionysius and the forms
5. Thomas, and some Thomists
6. Vico's new science
7. Kant and his students on the genius of nature
8. Hegel and the owl of Minerva
9. Kierkegaard: a poet, alas
10. Dilthey: poetry and the escape from metaphysics
11. Nietzsche, Heidegger and the saving power of poetry
12. Mikhail Bakhtin and novelistic consciousness.

Subject Areas: History of Western philosophy [HPC], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA]