Ancient quarrels and current perspectives in the relationship between poetry and philosophy

Abstract

Beginning with Plato's expulsion of the poets in the Republic, this dissertation looks at the often hostile, yet also symbiotic, relationship between poetry and philosophy. Aristotle's 'response' to Plato is regarded as a significant origin of literary theory. Nietzsche's critique of Western philosophy as being an attempt to suppress its own metaphoricity, leads to a revaluation of truth and consequently of the privileging of philosophy over poetry. Post-structuralism sometimes overemphasizes this constitutive force of metaphoricity, at the expense of conceptual modes. However, Derrida's notion of philosophy as play retains a balance between concept and metaphor: there is no attempt to transcendentally ground philosophy, but neither is it reduced to a merely metaphorical discourse. Finally, Wittgenstein's notion of meaning as determined by use can help us distinguish pragmatically between poetry and philosophy by looking at the contexts in which they function.