But I did email you, John. Truly I did.

Because of this... http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Whock

Columbo.

I'm sure you did, Ann. I remember that entry. Dearie me!

What John said is very true. Pope was a very philosophically inclined poet, and he supplied poetry with his Essay on Man, however in point of philosophy itself he fell short (that was his chief philosophical effort). I say this as a consummate Pope fan. For all its flours and embellishments of poetry, a Swiss philosopher Crousaz effectively criticized the Essay on the grounds of its philosophy.
For my part, I think matters that appertain to the art of living, ethics, and issues relating to the human heart are more amenable to treatment in poetry than epistemology, or metaphysics for example; yet even those I believe are not amenable to a systematic treatment in the way that philosophy proposes to do. What Pope did in the Essay on Man was supply poetry of philosophical concepts that were not at all revolutionary but already commonplace, yet in such a way that reading them they impressed the mind as though they were new. So I second what John said. Johnson criticized Pope for the philosophy in the Essay yet also allowed it showed:
"... his observations on the operations of the mind and the modes of life, shew an intelligence perpetually on the wing, excursive, vigorous, and diligent, eager to pursue knowledge, and attentive to retain it." Still if philosophy is what one craves, for merely the ideas themselves alone, one might find better nourishment in Immanuel Kant, or Heidegger, Hume or Isaiah Berlin.

Ann,

http://33.media.tumblr.com/7309f9b30...dc3bo1_500.gif

Of course, Mrs Feeny could be white trash ... :)

-Matt

Big topic, and we did have a thread once about Philosophy and Poetry, but I disagree with this, Eric. Didactic verse is not the only way to convey philosophy, nor the way I personally prefer. Poetry can embody philosophy in symbols and images. The profundity in King Lear or Song of Myself is philosophy in act. I like my philosophy with hair on it.

Try reading George Santayana's Three Philosophical Poets, on Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe. They were philosophical poets in a way Pope (who I like a lot) was not.

Ann, I wouldn't regard the Urban Dictionary as authoritative. Many of its entries seem to have been written by kids who have just read the novel Frindle (about a fifth-grader who invents a new word and tries to get others to use it). And the definitions for words that actually exist often seem like a deliberately offensive version of Fictionary.

Example: Check out the winning definition for trigger warning, and scroll down to the competing definitions. Compare upvotes and downvotes.


BTW, people who are distracted by the highlighted search terms in Erato threads can trim the highlighting instructions off the end of the URL. E.g., Andrew's link above, with highlighting, is:

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showth...losophy+poetry

Trim the "&highlight=philosophy+poetry" bit from that URL, and you're left with

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=3747

Andrew, sorry I didn't mean that philosophy can't be effectively found in poetry, it can indeed. It's just that I think if you merely want to gather ideas in and of themselves, prose writing is a more suitable medium in general for philosophical systems. I agree with you though that good philosophy can indeed be found in poetry, in a variety of ways and is.

I think it is a mistake to consider poetry as a vehicle to deliver or convey something other than itself, be that comedy or philosophy. Poetry is its own thing, sui generis, and can be found even in places where there are no words. Poetry that purports to be merely the carrier of something distinct from it is a mechanical construct, a verse-mobile.

"When I speak of poetry I am not thinking of it as a genre. Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality." (Andrey Tarkovsky)

Nemo

John,

You're poisoning the well before anyone even tries to draw water...

Best,

Bill

If you consider Jesus of Nazareth a philosopher, note that he famously taught via parables...which are a very open-ended mode of communication, asking each reader to engage with the imagery in his or her own way. That strikes me as a poetic approach.

Given the number of his self-identified followers who seem to have missed the point of many of his teachings, I do sometimes wish he had spelled things out a little more clearly for them.

Then again, many of his self-identified followers tend to have difficulties with his clear-cut commandments, too. So it's debatable which mode of communication is more effective for conveying philosophical principles.