A letter on ethics, creativity, and a divided life.
S.R.,
I have written elsewhere as to the different methodologies employed in the subjects of poetry and philosophy. It was there, latent, that my purpose lie, and only here do I reveal my serious intentions, and my impetus for writing.
My concern as to what poetry is, what philosophy is, is ancillary to the question of who the poet is, who the philosopher is, and why they are, and what demands are made of them. And the answer to such an inquiry, or, at the very least, an attempt at an answer, is to plumb the psychological depths of those archetypes, and to provide a portrait in words, as I might describe a persona in a drama. These categories at their boundaries, however, are not neat, and the ethos that is philosophic might also be poetic, and as the self is composed of strata, so our moral and intellectual and ethical lives are as variegated and complicated as the multiplicity which we inhabit, and yet it is incumbent upon us to delineate and carve out such distinctions.
The poet and the philosopher differ fundamentally in their ethical commitments — we might call these the poetic and philosophical lives respectively.
The poet, as we have seen, is committed to a gesture of their subject. The art is what we might call indicative, or deictic, in so far as the poet by means of their work points to phenomena but does not argue or prove some proposition about these phenomena. The truth is, as it were, on display for all whom have eyes to see and ears to hear, and the poet is the facilitator of this truth by gesture. It is only at the level of the techne itself do we call into question media and modes, and how they accomplish this verbal gesture (i.e., in publication or recitation, in free verse or iambs or trochees or anapests).
The philosopher, by contrast, is committed to an argumentative mode, a rationalistic mode, such that truths are not shown but teased out of phenomena — they are discovered where previously unknown, or created where they did not once, as it were, exist, and this done through traversing a labyrinth of argument, from proposition to proposition, and revision of hypothesis after examining its entailments.
While both characters possess a revelatory or apocalyptic quality, each differs in their methodology, but what I have not spoken of is the vision of the world and the kind of life that arises from these.
Such is a neat recapitulation of what we have already discussed. But what sorts of worlds do they inhabit?
“We really are, my friend, caught up in a difficult investigation…”
Plato, Sophist 236d10-236e1 (my translation)
We shall begin at the outset by stating that the poet and the philosopher differ in temperament, and it is disposition that compels one to a particular medium, but even more importantly, to a particular ethical mode, or set of commitments, and a set of axioms.
Let us turn to the poet and investigate his being.
The poet could just as well have been named the musician, or the thespian, which are species of the artist, for what all these arts have in common is a commitment to the impassioned part of ourselves (the passionate or spirited or emotional part), both in exciting that part, conjuring it up from within as with a spell or enchantment, and in embracing it, or inhabiting the world through its lens.
It is a very particular desire that inclines toward its (the world’s) reproduction through any of our sense modalities (sight, sound, touch), and we can find it simply in any sort of craft, in so far as, say, the carpenter or sculptor brings to life that vision of his mental life into the world we have here before our eyes. It is thus so far in some sense that the poet is a kind of craftsman, in so far as the vision becomes material.
And yet to plumb further, it is the reproduction or mimesis which the poet practices that we can further subdivide him into a different class, that of the artist, who reproduces a particular scene in the world, real or imagined, which appears in the mind’s eye, and renders that living for us all (as, say, when the musician plays, or the thespian performs). And it is here that we might distinguish, say, a mimesis which is seen versus one which is felt, though this does not entail a particular medium. There is a mimesis whereby I reproduce a thing with an aim to incite how that things appears to me (how it feels, we’ll say), versus how it appears or might appear to anyone at all (how the disinterested subject might see it).
That characteristic of these arts which aims to instill a particular feeling (or to reproduce a particular feeling), in so far as it is an art which is pathopoietic — a mimesis at the level of emotion — that characteristic distinguishes these (the thespian, the musician, the poet) from another kind of artist, say, the painter (in most cases — as the painter too can be pathopoietic). It is only perhaps at this level that I would distinguish these arts further by medium, where this may be appropriate.
And so the fundamental commitment of the poet is to the sort of life that is conducive to producing as its raw material the aesthetic experience, which he captures for the end of mimesis, transmitting it, as it were, to others by means of his work. It is with reference to this end that we might explain his trials and triumphs, in pursuit of a life that is full of individual meaning and rife with aesthetic value, seeking to refine the beauty that he finds in each and every thing available to sight, sound, and touch.
“My soul warns me to flee…
it tells me to flee, but I can’t. (lit., “do not have the strength”)”
Meleager, Greek Anthology 5.24 (my translation)
If it is through philosophy that we build systems, it is through poetry that we build nervous systems, in so far as that which results from the art is intended to instill a particular feeling.
So much for a glance at the poet — let us turn to the philosopher.
The philosopher, too, is a kind of artist in that same way in which the poet is. He seeks to reproduce a particular vision of the world as well, and whereas the poet’s truth is felt, the philosopher’s is thought, in so far as he seeks to produce a rational conviction through argument, or through the exercise of reason, and he accomplishes this through a particular medium which is regulated by a particular mode (speech or writing, and fixed by the hypothetical method, though perhaps there are other means).
Whereas the poet is pathopoietic, the philosopher, by contrast, is logopoietic (or perhaps noopoietic); he shares a particular vision of his world as does the poet, but the telos of his mimesis, if we can properly call it a mimesis of the physical world (I suppose, sometimes, we cannot) is that we agree with him in thought, if not perhaps emotion. This conviction, of course, is not wholly rational, as it is not merely exposure to arguments that are sound whereby we change our beliefs — our beliefs are in part emotional, entrenched at the level of emotion. But the philosopher tries in so far as he is able to investigate by means of reason — it is his hallmark, that reason tells him perhaps why a thing is the way it is, perhaps, that a thing is not as it ought to be, or some variation of this formula.
It is this emphasis on reason that distinguishes the philosopher from the poet, and subdivides him within the class of artist more generally, for, while the poet must employ reason as a tool, to, say, reproduce a particular scene, invoke a particular emotion, use a line composed of anapests or trochees, the rational portion of the mimetic in the poet’s case is not the telos properly, it is merely a means, rather than the end, whereas for the philosopher the exercise of reason is the telos properly.
The philosopher can be understood as desiring to inhabit a world that has been made intelligible to reason, where reason has taken the reins, as it were, and he seeks to perfect that reason within himself, and this necessarily requires a dominance of reason over the emotional or impassioned parts of one’s being, in so far as is desirable, in so far as we are able to retain both our rationality and our humanity.
And so the philosopher can be understood in light of this fundamental commitment as pursuing the sort of life that is in accordance with the demands of reason; that he engages both in the demands of his contemplative life and his practical life (in so far as reason makes demands of us, contra Hume). And his practical life is such as can be justified to himself based not on desire for the aesthetic experience, but a desire to be in accord with his endowed reasoning faculty–the exercise of reason, however, is not unaccompanied by goodness, or beauty, or pleasure, as these are ancillary, and, admittedly, what demands would reason make of us aside from the prudential acquisition of perceived goods–truth, beauty, and goodness itself?
And so we have a tenuous and preliminary sketch of the personae of our drama–the poet as the kind of person whose primary goal is the pursuit of the aesthetic experience, which furnishes the raw material for their art, and the philosopher, whose primary goal is the life which exercises reason (both contemplatively and practically), and that the choices of each is informed by this telos of their dramatic character. Both are inspired, but, perhaps by different Muses.
And with that said, I admit that this has not been a display of speculation for its own sake, but rather an attempt to understand myself, as I feel both of these tensions within myself, and they seem irreconcilable. On the one hand, the poetic life demands a love of every thing irreducibly, fully, dramatically, and even absurdly,
“At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.”
T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
And the philosophical a sort of disinterested distance from every thing, from the part of ourselves that clamors for preservation and permanence. We must content ourselves with the sort of world we inhabit–not negligently, but apathetically, in that forgotten sense, which we find in the Stoics, but elsewhere in the tradition as well–
“Many grains of frankincense falling onto the same altar–one now, another later, but it doesn’t matter.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.15 (my translation)
“To each of those things that allures you (psychagogeo), or have some use to you, or are loved (stergo) by you, remember to tell yourself what sort of thing it is, having begun from the most inconsequential: If you have a pot that you love, say to yourself ‘It is a pot that I love,’ and when it breaks, you will not be disturbed.”
Epictetus, Encheiridion 3 (my translation)
And so you see, I’m sure, that tension which arises from two very different lives.
I take some comfort in the fact that perhaps there can be some accord or harmony of the two, as we find in our Plato (Socrates kissing Agathon), or, perhaps even more obscure, the Epicurean Philodemus–
“I loved–who hasn’t?
Sure, I reveled–same as anyone else.
Who drove me mad, afterall? Wasn’t it a god?”
Philodemus, Greek Anthology 5.112 (my translation)
So–what shall we conclude?
Temperance in all things, I suppose. Even temperance.
Farewell.
Sincerely,
George