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 ix
... once wrote . I have not tried to make the wounded speak here ; I wouldn't dare . 1 thank the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania for its generous support , and my superb new colleagues ...
... once wrote . I have not tried to make the wounded speak here ; I wouldn't dare . 1 thank the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania for its generous support , and my superb new colleagues ...
Page 2
... once to know only that he knew noth- ing . From the Symposium's Alcibiades , we know much about his resistance against the flesh , but not so much about the attraction that the mad rituals of prophets and bacchantic dance , promising ...
... once to know only that he knew noth- ing . From the Symposium's Alcibiades , we know much about his resistance against the flesh , but not so much about the attraction that the mad rituals of prophets and bacchantic dance , promising ...
Page 8
... once , that I saw it before me when I initially started to think about madness and poetry , and that I find it both mad and reasonable , and also poetic . It is not only that there are acts that can be both mad and reasonable ; it is a ...
... once , that I saw it before me when I initially started to think about madness and poetry , and that I find it both mad and reasonable , and also poetic . It is not only that there are acts that can be both mad and reasonable ; it is a ...
Page 10
... once again philosophize poetically might well be received as similar advice to the merchant would be : that he henceforward write his ledgers not in prose but in verse.26 The chief positions on Plato's work with regard to this issue are ...
... once again philosophize poetically might well be received as similar advice to the merchant would be : that he henceforward write his ledgers not in prose but in verse.26 The chief positions on Plato's work with regard to this issue are ...
Page 11
... 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 precisely that alienation from himself that would allow him to leave the ...
... 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 precisely that alienation from himself that would allow him to leave the ...
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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...