Philosophical Contexts for Reading Poetry

A special issue of Philosophies (ISSN 2409-9287).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2026 | Viewed by 450

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University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
Interests: twentieth century american poetry; philosophy; visual arts
* Retired.
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Dear Colleagues,

Poetry is not philosophy, nor was it meant to be, except in rare, glorious examples. And only Wittgenstein seems willing to claim that philosophy should be written as poetry. Yet it is difficult to imagine poetry not wanting to impinge on the cultural roles played by at least some philosophy. And some philosophers, like Hegel, at least want to influence the course of poetic practice. So, it seems useful to inquire into the various ways these two disciplines can overlap or have influenced one another’s modes of inquiry. For example, how do philosophical concerns help shape one’s attention to the work style accomplishments or the ambitions given form in a text? And how do those concerns help clarify the stakes involved in identifying with characters or dramatizing the significance of how scenes and arguments play out? Finally, why might it matter to envision competing philosophical stances explored through concrete situations?

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Culture.

Prof. Dr. Charles F. Altieri
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • philosophical contexts
  • poetic language
  • metaphor and meaning
  • esthetics and ethics
  • phenomenology of art
  • poetic knowledge

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

14 pages, 198 KB  
Communication
Between Poetry and Philosophy
by Charles Altieri
Philosophies 2026, 11(1), 13; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11010013 - 28 Jan 2026
Viewed by 98
Abstract
Poetry is not philosophy, nor was it meant to be, except on rare, glorious occasions. And only Wittgenstein seems willing to claim that philosophy should be written as poetry. Yet it is difficult to imagine poetry not wanting to impinge on the cultural [...] Read more.
Poetry is not philosophy, nor was it meant to be, except on rare, glorious occasions. And only Wittgenstein seems willing to claim that philosophy should be written as poetry. Yet it is difficult to imagine poetry not wanting to impinge on the cultural roles played by at least some philosophy. And some philosophers, like Hegel and Heidegger, want to influence the course of poetic practice. So it seems useful to inquire into the various ways these two disciplines can overlap or complicate one another’s modes of inquiry, even if one has no hope of securing abstract definitions for either practice. Those with the appropriate philosophical background, for example, could articulate tensions within a culture’s intellectual life as a means of specifying how an author develops emotionally resonant concrete experiences grappling with this environment. One example might be examining how the need to address Humean skepticism helped shape the development of Romantic ways of making constructive imagination inseparable from attentive states of perceptive involvement in the world. Another example might focus on efforts by contemporary poetry to correlate the work performed by ordinary language philosophy with Heideggerean ideals of building and dwelling potentially applicable to the frameworks provided by philosophical grammar. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophical Contexts for Reading Poetry)
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