There is a long-standing debate about whether poetry can make a substantive contribution to philosophy with compelling arguments to show that poetry and philosophy involve distinct modes of thought and aims, albeit with similar concerns. This paper argues that reading lyric poetry can play a substantive role in philosophy by helping the philosopher understand how to forge connections with the perspectives of others. The paper takes the view that poetry is not directly philosophical but can play an important role in (...) developing the philosopher's awareness of how perspective shapes beliefs and thought processes. Following Robert Nozick, David Lewis, and Helen Beebee, it argues for the need to broaden our conception of the aims of philosophy beyond aiming for conclusive proof, at the least where philosophical inquiry is focused on questions of value. It then shows how poetry cultivates an intellectual virtue essential to philosophy aimed at uncovering equilibria and collective understanding. (shrink)

In order to show how Michel Serres’s work diverges from traditional Western philosophy, this article explores a multitude of texts and contexts against which Serres might be better understood. Most starkly, Serres’s work diverges from the eighteenth and nineteenth century Germanic tradition of Bildung, meaning cultivation through introspection, apolitical thought and character building through education. Serres’s moves away from ego-centric thought to eco-centric thought more akin to what Gregory Bateson called an ecology of mind. That is, Serres’s integrates—in a more (...) ecological fashion—poetry, science, the arts, ecology and politics to raise philosophical questions. Further, this author suggests that Serres’s reference to the nineteenth century poem Pierrot Lunaire ) serves as a trope for Serres’s over-arching philosophy. Pierrot is an artist, a sage, an outlier, a Hermes-like figure who breaks with tradition. Arnold Schoenberg’s atonal performance piece, spoken and sung, shattered the boundaries of classical music. Like Schoenberg’s work, Serres’s work, both in style and content, shatters the boundaries of traditional philosophy. Serres’s breaks open a new paradigm in philosophy. (shrink)

El texto pretende analizar la relación entre la condición de ceguera que puede afectar a un sujeto y sus implicaciones en la actividad poiética del mismo. Para ello, acudimos a la reflexión heideggeriana sobre la poiesis como raíz común de los actuales conceptos de técnica y arte, ilustrando cómo la situación de ceguera puede ser favorable (o no) para las prácticas poiéticas. El análisis se desarrollará considerando, inicialmente, uno de los primeros ejemplos literarios de la Modernidad en plantear la relación (...) entre la ceguera y la poiesis: la última escena del Fausto de Goethe, en donde el protagonista, luego de haber quedado ciego, decide construir un dique para contener la fuerza del mar. En una segunda parte, se complementarán nuestras observaciones con el estudio de algunos casos clínicos que Oliver Sacks expone en sus obras para destacar otras facetas de la relación entre ceguera y poiesis en un contexto de no ficción literaria. Con este análisis, se explicita de una manera clara que existe una relación entre poiesis y ceguera en el Fausto de Goethe y se identifican los rasgos de dicha correlación, destacando también su relevancia en el ámbito terapéutico y existencial de los estudios sobre ceguera. (shrink)