So much philosophy covertly circulates around the question of what should lead philosophy or poetry, emotion or reason. It's all in Plato and in Plato is the whole dialectic of the Western thinking. Which horse should lead the carriage? Who should be in charge? The animal or the computer attached to the top of the animal? I've always loved the American tradition of poetry and philosophy because there's a pragmatic blend of both sensation and sense data and rational calculation; there’s a respect for both. There's nothing in American literature, of course, like Heidegger or Plato. But in a philosopher like William James, there's a delight in thinking and feeling; thinking is feeling, in a way. In Whitman, there's a similar philosophical delight in experiencing, in sensation. And in Emerson, a delight in all of the above. Similarly I find these kind of synthetic blend of head and heart in poets like Ashbery or Ammons or Stevens, Dickinson. It seems fairly unique to the Americas; this might be what the New World meant to Western culture; the blossoming of the seed and the egg of European philosophy and poetry is the American sublime.
© 2024 m
Substack is the home for great culture