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. |
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Page 1
... knowledge of the future , she refused to honor her side of the bargain . Since Greek gods cannot take back what they give , she now had the inhuman gift of seeing and saying the truth . She saw Troy fall ; she knew that the wooden horse ...
... knowledge of the future , she refused to honor her side of the bargain . Since Greek gods cannot take back what they give , she now had the inhuman gift of seeing and saying the truth . She saw Troy fall ; she knew that the wooden horse ...
Page 2
... knowledge . In order to know , she is to surrender her body and her own desire . Who can tell whether this is a fair price ? Socrates might have known , but he decided against his carnal love for the boys as well as against secure knowledge ...
... knowledge . In order to know , she is to surrender her body and her own desire . Who can tell whether this is a fair price ? Socrates might have known , but he decided against his carnal love for the boys as well as against secure knowledge ...
Page 3
... knowledge , reason in balance a term that comes closest to being the opposite of madness . 5 At the same time , it is Socrates who insists that to know anything is to know its op- posite as well . He who knows most about sophrosune ...
... knowledge , reason in balance a term that comes closest to being the opposite of madness . 5 At the same time , it is Socrates who insists that to know anything is to know its op- posite as well . He who knows most about sophrosune ...
Page 5
... knowledge ( or memory ) allotted to those who stay confined within the realm of reason . First , Foucault has to bracket some questions : Did Nietzsche , for example , really write a language of madness , or did his madness coincide ...
... knowledge ( or memory ) allotted to those who stay confined within the realm of reason . First , Foucault has to bracket some questions : Did Nietzsche , for example , really write a language of madness , or did his madness coincide ...
Page 11
... knowledge that was not to be found by the reasonable mind , but that , once expressed and examined , was not alien to it either . While the poet was mad , his text was exceptionally reasonable , for the privilege of the mad- man was ...
... knowledge that was not to be found by the reasonable mind , but that , once expressed and examined , was not alien to it either . While the poet was mad , his text was exceptionally reasonable , for the privilege of the mad- man was ...
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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...