Abstract

Lyric Philosophy: To Think by Experiencing an Echo of Meaning The study aims to present and shed light on lyric philosophy, a philosophical orienta- tion established by the Canadian philosopher Jan Zwicky. It does so in several steps. First, it presents the central idea of the existence of nonverbal lyric thinking and the experiencing of lyric practice in the framework of which the meaning of this world and its individual parts is to be shown to us. It then illustrates these theses by present- ing the two main inspirations of lyric philosophy – the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgen- stein and gestaltism. It also brings nearer the relationship between lyric philosophy and the philosophical method that is reduced to thinking in words with the help of logical categories. It then focuses on the communication of meaning through meta- phorical expression, which Zwicky considers to be a sort of “window” in the “wall” between us and the meaning through which we are able to see meaning. Finally, the study considers lyric philosophy’s problematic areas and relationship with the philo- sophical tradition and makes an attempt to outline its potential for philosophical re- search in general.