Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Socrates, Plato, and the Invention of the Ancient Quarrel
- 2 Aristotle, Poetry, and Ethics
- 3 Plotinus, Augustine, and Strange Sweetness
- 4 Boethius, Dionysius, and the Forms
- 5 Thomas and Some Thomists
- 6 Vico's New Science
- 7 Kant and His Students on the Genius of Nature
- 8 Hegel and the Owl of Minerva
- 9 Kierkegaard: A Poet, Alas
- 10 Dilthey: Poetry and the Escape from Metaphysics
- 11 Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Saving Power of Poetry
- 12 Mikhail Bakhtin and Novelistic Consciousness
- Index
- References
12 - Mikhail Bakhtin and Novelistic Consciousness
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Socrates, Plato, and the Invention of the Ancient Quarrel
- 2 Aristotle, Poetry, and Ethics
- 3 Plotinus, Augustine, and Strange Sweetness
- 4 Boethius, Dionysius, and the Forms
- 5 Thomas and Some Thomists
- 6 Vico's New Science
- 7 Kant and His Students on the Genius of Nature
- 8 Hegel and the Owl of Minerva
- 9 Kierkegaard: A Poet, Alas
- 10 Dilthey: Poetry and the Escape from Metaphysics
- 11 Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Saving Power of Poetry
- 12 Mikhail Bakhtin and Novelistic Consciousness
- Index
- References
Summary
This history has concentrated on the quarrel as it is portrayed and expressed in writing. Throughout, poetry and the poets show up in philosophy as a source of language, a source of ideas, or source of inspiration, or else an obstacle to ideas, a foil, a source of lunacy, a punching bag. It is a persistent relationship, so far looked at from the perspective primarily of the philosophers, though the same quarrel might be addressed from the perspective of the poets with a very different tale resulting. In this history, despite the recurrent appearance of the poets, the importance of the idea of poetry, and the background and foundation provided by poetry for the work of philosophy, it is rare to see what it might look like for various poetic voices – singular voices singing, as did Homer and Hesiod, through the Greek rhapsodes – to be forced into the arena of consciousness created by the philosophical impulse to question and made to stay in the cauldron. All too often in the writings of the philosophers, the poets are made use of, their methods critiqued, some of their claims mocked, and their resources pillaged (often with respect, of course, as with Hegel, Dilthey, and Heidegger), while they are made to serve the singular narrative of the singular philosopher who has seen what is of value and found its place in the world – thus retaining for philosophy legislative authority.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Ancient Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry , pp. 254 - 272Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011