The Controversy Between Poetry and Philosophy

Author: Luo Sen Zhang Hui
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: Poetry is an intermediate concept, situated between philosophy and politics. It preserves the fundamental identity of each while preventing them from separating. Such separation leads to the dismemberment of the human soul, which in turn results in the political distortions I mentioned earlier. If there is a whole—meaning, a unity of human experience—one can only approach it through poetry. Conversely, if there is no whole, we must again invent it through poetry. Although Rosen believes in the modernist poet T.S. Eliot's truth that "poetry and philosophy are different languages of the same world," his teacher Strauss helped him realize that "there is an irreconcilable tension between the two languages." Therefore, rather than attempting to offer a compromise solution for this "irreconcilable tension" in his writings, Rosen seeks to demonstrate the complexity and richness of this dispute. Starting from ancient Greece, particularly Plato, Rosen examines the crises faced by modern thought since Nietzsche from multiple perspectives. He both explores the historicalist and nihilistic consequences of "philosophy investing in poetry" and reflects on the tragic fate of equating philosophy with cold mathematics, which leads to its own degradation into mere technique and the fall of the love of philosophy into decline.