The Quarrel And Combination Between Poetry And Philosophy In Western Mind History

"The quarrel between philosophy and poetry"is an old theme in Western culture. Plato point out in Republic that such quarrel has a long history already. During the sixth century and fifth century BC, a real conflict was taken place between two groups of Greeks. At that time, either philosophers or poets claimed themselves as faithful friends of wisdom and truth, and so opened the prologue of this controversy.From then on, this controversy became a constant and everlasting theme. Plato's condemnation to poetry and poets, Aristotle's plead for poetry, Augustine and Boethius'rejection poetry, idol-destroying movement in the Middle Ages, Sidney and Shelley's plead for poetry, Vico's"poetic intelligence", Hegel's prophecy on the withering away of art aiming at philosophy's substituting for poetry, Nietzsche's"poetic philosophy", Dilthey's differentiation between spiritual science and natural science, Heidegger's thinking about the relation between"poetry"and"thought", Wittgenstein's"illness of philosophy"theory, Derrida's"anti-logocentrism", Rorty's"philosophy of edification"----- all these implied directly or indirectly the quarrel between philosophy and poetry.This thesis is made up of four chapters:Chapter I: the quarrel between philosophy and poetry in Western history. In this chapter, we describe the historical progress of this problem from Greek and Rome periods to the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Enlightenment, and modern Western world.Chapter II: contents of the quarrel between philosophy and poetry. In this chapter, we sum up this problem into five aspects: 1. the quarrel of epistemological way: whether poetry or philosophy is the conveyer of truth; 2. the quarrel of living meanings: whether poetry or philosophy is the more proper living way; 3. the quarrel of ontological ideas: whether poetic or reason is the principle of world; 4. the quarrel of functions and effects: whether poetry or philosophy is the Redeemer of life and world; 5. the quarrel of discourse power: whether poetry or philosophy is the stronger cultural pattern.Chapter III: cause and nature of the quarrel between poetry and philosophy. In this chapter, we analyses the cause and nature of this problem.Chapter IV: combinations of poetry and philosophy. In this chapter, we state certain main representational characters'contradictory attitudes on this problem and point out such attitudes give some possibilities to the combinations of poetry and philosophy.In the epilogue, we state meanings and revelations of"the quarrel between poetry and philosophy."...