The Abyss Above: Philosophy and Poetic Madness in Plato, Hölderlin, and NietzscheIn The Abyss Above, Silke-Maria Weineck offers the first sustained discussion of the relationship between poetic madness and philosophy. Focusing on the mad poet as a key figure in what Plato called “the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry,” Weineck explores key texts from antiquity to modernity in order to understand why we have come to associate art with irrationality. She shows that the philosophy of madness concedes to the mad a privilege that continues to haunt the Western dream of reason, and that the theory of creative madness always strains the discourse on authenticity, pitching the controlled, repeatable, but restrained labor of philosophy against the spontaneous production of poetic texts said to be, by definition, unique. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 34
Page 11
... inspired or mad poet , is an uncountable and unaccountable figure in philosophy's calculations . At the far end , madness indeed can appear as an extraordinary expenditure of mental or physical energy that cannot be recu- perated into ...
... inspired or mad poet , is an uncountable and unaccountable figure in philosophy's calculations . At the far end , madness indeed can appear as an extraordinary expenditure of mental or physical energy that cannot be recu- perated into ...
Page 12
... inspiration as a state that disallows self- reflection . Ironically , then , the superior status to which divinely inspired speech can lay claim is simultaneously the condition of its subjection to philosophy . As I will show in the ...
... inspiration as a state that disallows self- reflection . Ironically , then , the superior status to which divinely inspired speech can lay claim is simultaneously the condition of its subjection to philosophy . As I will show in the ...
Page 15
... inspired — is the only state of intellectual autonomy that escapes the collective's sanctions against individual aberrance , precisely because it ap- pears as the ultimate negation of autonomous thought . In Madness and Civilization ...
... inspired — is the only state of intellectual autonomy that escapes the collective's sanctions against individual aberrance , precisely because it ap- pears as the ultimate negation of autonomous thought . In Madness and Civilization ...
Page 16
... inspiration can survive as long as there is a higher authority that con- trols our fates — as long , in other words , as God lives in his many theist and atheist guises . The last section of this chapter before the epilogue is devoted ...
... inspiration can survive as long as there is a higher authority that con- trols our fates — as long , in other words , as God lives in his many theist and atheist guises . The last section of this chapter before the epilogue is devoted ...
Page 17
... inspired the first text of Western literature but perhaps is the very text of ' the West ' itself . This victory , prefigured in the mad rants of the woman who defied the god of truth , could not have been won if anyone had listened to ...
... inspired the first text of Western literature but perhaps is the very text of ' the West ' itself . This victory , prefigured in the mad rants of the woman who defied the god of truth , could not have been won if anyone had listened to ...
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Antigone Antigone's appears argues Arkady Plotnitsky artist become body caesura Celan's certainly claims concept Creativity criticism critique cultural Derrida dialogue divine inspiration divine madness Eros erotic madness Essays and Letters Foucault Frankfurt/M Friedrich Hölderlin Gay Science Geist Greek Hegel Heidegger Hölderlin's madness Homer human idea insanity Irrsinn Jacques Derrida Jänner knowledge language Leben logos mad poet mad speech madman Madness and Civilization mania meaning Mensch Menschen metaphor metaphysical mind mode modern morality ness Nietzsche Nietzsche's madness Oedipus Oedipus's original palinode pallaksch passage Paul Celan perhaps Phaedrus Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe philosophy Plato's Phaedrus poem poetic madness poetry precisely privileged question reason recantation Republic rhapsode rhetoric seems self-knowledge sense Sittlichkeit sobriety Socrates Sophocles soul speak Sprache suggests technê theory thought tion tragedy tragic trans transcend translation Truth and Lie truth drive Tübingen Türcke Wahnsinn words writing
Popular passages
Page 3 - As for a common language, there is no such thing; or rather, there is no such thing any longer; the constitution of madness as a mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, affords the evidence of a broken dialogue, posits the separation as already effected, and thrusts into oblivion all those stammered, imperfect words without fixed syntax in which the exchange between madness and reason was made. The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue of reason about madness, has been established...