Abstract

How do philosophical discourse and poetic expression relate? The divergent modes of expression of ‘logical thinking’ and ‘thinking through the senses’, i.e. of philosophy and verbal art, are explored by means of philosophical texts and poems on seven topics, viz. the aesthetic experience, language, being, time, identity, knowledge and love. This examination leads the author to conclude that there are ‘family resemblances’ between philosophical discourse and poetic language, rather than clear-cut distinctions. Yet, the poetic expression is marked by its form, its fictitious character and the symbolic treatment of language. The main contrasts between poetry and philosophy and between their respective idioms prove to be the use of the ‘logic of imagination’ versus the ‘logic of the intellect’; of inductive versus deductive thinking and of the presence of the first personal pronoun, the ‘lyrical I’, versus the anonymous third personal pronoun