The Poetry of Thought: From Hellenism to CelanFrom the distinguished polymath George Steiner comes a profound and illuminating vision of the inseparability of Western philosophy and its living language. With his hallmark forceful discernment, George Steiner presents in The Poetry of Thought his magnum opus: an examination of more than two millennia of Western culture, staking out his claim for the essential oneness of great thought and great style. Sweeping yet precise, moving from essential detail to bracing illustration, Steiner spans the entire history of philosophy in the West as it entwines with literature, finding that, as Sartre stated, in all philosophy there is “a hidden literary prose.”“The poetic genius of abstract thought,” Steiner believes, “is lit, is made audible. Argument, even analytic, has its drumbeat. It is made ode. What voices the closing movements of Hegel’s Phenomenology better than Edith Piaf’s non de non, a twofold negation which Hegel would have prized? This essay is an attempt to listen more closely.” |
Contents
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abstract aempts aesthetic ancient Antigone Aristophanes Aristotle articulation Averroës Bergson Borges Celan cognitive commentary conict consciousness Croce ction Dante’s death denes Descartes Descartes’s dialectic dialogue dicult dierences discourse dramatic dreams echo Empedocles epistemological epistemology existential Faust Freud genius German Greek Hegel Hegelian Heidegger Heidegger’s Heraclitus Heraclitus’s Hölderlin Homer human Hume’s Husserl idiom inspired intellectual intuited Kant language Leibniz Leo Strauss linguistic literary literature logic Lucretius lyric maer Mallarmé Marx Marx’s master mathematics meaning Merleau-Ponty metaphor metaphysical modern motion Musil Nietzsche Nietzsche’s ofthe ofthought paradox Parmenides Paul Celan Phenomenology philo philosophic Plato play poem poet poetic poetry polemic political Pre-Socratics propositions prose Protagoras Proust rhetoric Rilke’s Sartre Sartre’s scientic sense sensibility signicance social Socrates Sophocles Spinoza syntax T. S. Eliot theory thought tion Tractatus tragedy translation truth uerance Valéry Valéry’s voice Wigenstein words wrien writings