The Italian poet Quasimodo said that philosophers
> were the
> natural enemies of poets. He called philosophers the
> "inveterate
> card-indexers of the universe."
This reminds me of Wittgenstein's image of the library
of knowledge, where there are books on physics,
botany, poetics, Aussie Rules and so on - every
subject under the sun - but no philosophy section, cos
'the philosopher is the librarian'. He decides where
the books go, and keeps them in the right places.
"Philosophy, in general, is anatomizing, dissective."
Analytic philosophy is, sure, but what about, say,
Hegel? What about Marx?
A certain kind of calm pervades philosophy; poets
> are
> often aggitated (Rimbaud, Plath).
Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Rousseau,
Abelard... hardly calm characters
Our enterprise is creative; a philosopher may use
> creative thinking,
> but its thinking employed toward the endpoint of
> understanding
> (illusive as that place may be). Poets are trying to
> "outstrip"
> any attempt to understand their enterprise
But there's a difference between understanding every
bit of your methodology and reaching an understanding
with your methodology. The history of philosophy is
replete with stories of lightbulbs flashing in
philosophers' heads.
A big part of philosophy (in my opinion the only
useful part) is conceptual analysis, and conceptual
analysis relies almost entirely on intuition.
Cya
Scott
--- [log in to unmask] wrote: > << It's the minor
artists -- not artists in general
> -- that tend to get all
> defensive when philosophers tread on their turf,
> and it seems to me they do
> so chiefly because of a self-romanticizing fondness
> of their own work and
> because they lack the education and intelligence to
> understand philosophy,
> which is not easy to understand. A lack of
> systematic interest in
> philosophy may come naturally in this comfy age of
> specialization, but
> aggressive defensiveness is just comic. Most people
> understand what they do
> only in a very shallow way, and artists are no
> exception (Bertrand Russell
> said the same about mathematicians). It's a shallow
> artist that doesn't
> have a philosophy of what she does. I can't think
> of a single great writer
> who'd despise philosophy.
>
> I should say I don't mean anyone in particular:
> just some remarks about a
> mindset that may well be prevalent among poets in
> general. It's curious
> that similar attitudes toward philosophy obtains,
> for example, in
> nationalists. Something clashes there at a visceral
> level. (Whereas
> philosophers generally respect the arts and show a
> genuine interest in
> them.)
>
> By the way, screw the middle way too. If you want
> to understand something
> at the most abstract level, it's philosophy or
> nothing.
>
> Philip
> >>
> Philip,
> The Italian poet Quasimodo said that philosophers
> were the
> natural enemies of poets. He called philosophers the
> "inveterate
> card-indexers of the universe."
> I don't disagree with all you've said but you seem
> a little more in awe of philosophy than any poet
> need be.
> Philosophers ought to go in fear of poets; esp.
> profound
> ones like Stevens & those with a those with a "third
> eye"
> like Olson or Celan.
> Philosophy, in general, is anatomizing, dissective.
> Poetry
> works, in general, by different means: often
> synthetic/alchemic;
> ocassionally, often in the political mode,
> explosive; disintegrative.
> A certain kind of calm pervades philosophy; poets
> are
> often aggitated (Rimbaud, Plath).
> Our enterprise is creative; a philosopher may use
> creative thinking,
> but its thinking employed toward the endpoint of
> understanding
> (illusive as that place may be). Poets are trying to
> "outstrip"
> any attempt to understand their enterprise...and in
> so doing are
> naturally suspicious of surveying, assay, or any
> mapping along the
> way that might impede the pure impulse.
> But, that being said, I would recommend "The Main of
> Light"
> by Justus Buchler (American philosopher). A book
> that confronts
> & sometimes debunks many "sacred truths" & "totems"
> of the tribe of poets. But does so with deep respect
> for the art itself.
> Finnegan
>
=====
"Why is it not possible for me to doubt that I have never been on the moon? And how
could I try to doubt it? First and foremost, the supposition that perhaps I have
been there would strike me as idle. Nothing would follow from it, nothing be
explained by it. It would not tie in with anything in my life... Philosophical
problems occur when language goes on holiday. We must not separate ideas from life,
we must not be misled by the appearances of sentences: we must investigate the
application of words in individual language-games" - Ludwig Wittgenstein
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