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“The Pealing Of Stillness”: Gadamer On Georg Trakl, Ian Alexander Moore

Philosophy Faculty Works

Addressing the place of the Austrian poet, Georg Trakl, in the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, this article turns in particular to Trakl’s poem “A Winter Evening” in order to unfold a sense of language in dialogue with the poet. This engagement equally becomes the occasion for Gadamer to confront Heidegger, whose own reading of Trakl becomes both an inspiration and a challenge.

Heidegger On The “Futural” Poet Rilke Poetizing The Essential Truth Of Being?, James Magrini

Philosophy Scholarship

This essay poses and responds uniquely to the following crucial questions: Does Rilke’s poetry poetize the event of Being for Dasein? Does Rilke indicate that the human being can yet achieve such a mode of “historical” existence in relation to the Earth or the holy? Heidegger responds to the first query in the affirmative; Rilke does poetize this event, albeit through a “tempered” and somewhat traditional view of Western metaphysics. To the second query, it appears that Heidegger responds in a slightly cryptic and ambiguous manner, and to clarify this response, I turn to Heidegger’s interpretation of Rilke’s “Angel” as …

Shibboleth: Judges, Derrida, Celan [Toc], Marc Redfield

Philosophy & Theory

In the Book of Judges, the Gileadites use the word shibboleth to target and kill members of a closely related tribe, the Ephraimites, who cannot pronunce the initial shin phoneme. In modern European languages, shibboleth has come to mean a hard-to-falsify sign that winnows identities, and establishes and confirms borders; it has also acquired the ancillary meanings of slogan or cliché. The semantic field of shibboleth thus seems keyed to the waning of the logos in an era of technical reproducibility—to the proliferation of technologies and practices of encryption, decryption, exclusion and inclusion that saturate modern life. In the context …

21st Century Ecopoetics (Selected Topics In Literature And Science), Robert Balun

Open Educational Resources

Ecopoetics is the study of literature that is concerned with ecology and nature. However, beyond just literature about nature, this course will examine how ecology and nature have become complicated in the 21st century, the age of the Anthropocene, the age of the climate crisis and the 6th mass extinction (don’t worry, we will define these and other key terms).

In the 21st century, humans are now confronted with a growing awareness of their destructive impact on the earth, its environments, and its human and non-human inhabitants. In this class we will examine how ecology and nature have become complicated …

The Sanctuary Of Acceptance: Love And Identity Through The Letters And Poetry Of John Keats, Amanda Caridad Estevez Ms.

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I propose to explain how it is that the life and work of John Keats assists us in answering the question of how we create ourselves through the presence of others. I aim to do this through an analysis of the work that his relationship with Fanny Brawne inspired. In doing so, I hope to prove that romantic love creates a sort of metaphysical sanctuary for us to inhabit as we shift through the various incarnations of our identity throughout our lives. By synthesizing the theories of phenomenology and transgression, I hope to demonstrate how Keats’ rapid …

The Letters Of William Cullen Bryant: Volume I, 1809–1836, William Cullen Bryant Ii, Thomas G. Voss

American Philosophy

This is the only collection ever made of Bryant's letters, two-thirds of which have never before been printed. Their publication was foreseen by the late Allan Nevin as "one of the most important and stimulating enterprises contributory to the enrichment of the nation's cultural and political life that is now within range of individual and group effort.

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) was America's earliest national poet. His immediate followers—Longfellow, Poe, and Whitman—unquestionably began their distinguished careers in imitation of his verses. But Bryant was even more influential in his long career as a political journalist, and in his encouragement of …

The Letters Of William Cullen Bryant: Volume Vi, 1872–1878, William Cullen Bryant Ii, Thomas G. Voss

American Philosophy

In January 1872, Bryant traveled to Mexico City, where he was greeted warmly by President Benito Juarez; on this and other occasions he was feted for the Evening Post's sturdy condemnation in 1863 of the abortive invasion of Mexico, which was freshly remembered there. At the close of his visit a local newspaper remarked that the "honors and hospitality which were so lavishly and generously conferred upon him were the spontaneous outpouring of a grateful people, who had not forgotten that when Mexico was friendless Mr. Bryant became her friend." Returning in April through New Orleans and up the …

The Making And Silencing Of “Axé-Ocracy” In Brazil: Black Women Writers’ Spiritual, Political And Literary Movement In São Paulo, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

In this article, I will focus on two influential writers from the south of Brazil, Cristiane Sobral who currently lives in Brasília, from Rio de Janeiro, and Conceição Evaristo who currently lives in Rio de Janeiro state, from Minas Gerais. I got to know them in São Paulo in 2015 at a public event: the “Afroétnica Flink! Sampa Festival of Black Thought, Literature and Culture.” I will include references to some of their younger contemporaries such as Raquel Almeida, Jenyffer Nascimento, and Elizandra Souza, all of whom reside in São Paulo, in order to illustrate the Black Brazilian women writers’ …

The Journey Of An Emotional Black Boy, Alonzo Elias

Philosophy Summer Fellows

The title of my project is "Emotional Nigga" a.k.a. "Emotional Black Boy" because people would be comfortable if I called it so. The audience for this project may want to think of it this way. The title I chose is meant to express the struggles I faced in my journey to self-awareness. I decided to share my story through fifteen topics, which have brought me a better understanding of myself and will hopefully help the audience as well. These topics are Self-Love, Prelude: Intimacy and Attachment Theory, Relationships, Sex, Beauty, Sexuality, Love, Self-Love, Spirituality, Religion, Astrology, Psychology, Self-Care, and Life. …

Waiting As Resistance: Lingering, Loafing, And Whiling Away, Harold Schweizer

Faculty Journal Articles

„Waiting as Resistance: Lingering, Loafing, and Whiling Away” is a critique of the economics of consumption, suggesting that the widespread denigration of waiting as lost time and its economic and psychological displacements in consumer goods amount to a denigration of human life itself. In the practice of lingering and its related temporalities, the author proposes, we regain an appreciation of the fundamental temporality of all things, that everything, we humans included, is constituted by time. Conceptually indebted to Theodor Adorno and substantiated with reference, chiefly to Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” and other poetic works, this argument throughout opposes the …

Edgar Allan Poe’S Cosmology And Natural Theology: A Constructive Postmodern Appreciation, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Contrary to some literary classifications, Edgar Allan Poe’s book-length prose poem Eureka is not intended to be fiction. In Eureka Poe was seriously attempting to advance ‘truth’ about the universe. Poe was doing natural science and poetry in the tradition of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and other natural philosophers. Poe’s prose poem is natural scientific astronomy and cosmology, plus natural theology, not science fiction.

The Public Vs. The Private, Elise "Alice" G. Roberson

Audre Lorde Writing Prize

No abstract provided.

Antonio T. De Nicolás: Poet Of Eternal Return, Christopher Key Chapple

Research Resources

This book includes essays in honor of Professor Antonio de Nicolas.

Two Against Freud: Pinsky’S ‘Essay On Psychiatrists’ In A Philosophical Context, Brian Glaser

English Faculty Articles and Research

This article offers a reading of Robert Pinsky’s “Essay on Psychiatrists” in the context of a contemporary theoretical work by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus. I do not use the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari to make interpretive comments about poetry, to identify or articulate meanings. Rather I read Pinsky’s poem in the context of the philosophy, noting points of agreement between the two texts, areas where the poetry works as a supplement to the insights of the philosophy, places where the poetry offers grounds for criticisms of the philosophy and times where there might be irreconcilable differences in …

Thought And Verse: French Poetry In Conversation With French Existentialist Philosophy, Maxwell E. Edmonds

Senior Honors Projects

Thought and Verse: French Poetry in Conversation with French Existentialist Philosophy

Maxwell Edmonds

Faculty Sponsor: Karen de Bruin, French Language & Literature

What is the meaning of life? Does God exist? How can we live authentically and with purpose? How can we conduct our day to day lives, while faced with our own mortality? These are several of the principle themes focused upon within existentialist philosophy, the philosophy of existing as a mortal human being.

I chose to study existentialist philosophy through the lens of one of my other interests: French poetry. This combination has allowed me to approach both …

Cognitive Processes Of Surrealist Poetry In Light Of Hegel & Insomniac Trials, Edward Rogers

Mahurin Honors College & Office of Scholar Development

This thesis project pursues the stylistic nature of Surrealist writing and provides deeper understanding into how one may interpret Surrealist poetry. My work consists of two written components: an analytical essay concerning how Hegelian philosophy is applicable to the understanding and interpretation of Surrealist expression and a collection of original Surrealist poems titled “Insomnia Trials.” My essay introduces Surrealism then further discusses the processes of Surrealist writing by analyzing the Hegelian dialectic and demonstrating how it corresponds to the interpretation and manifestation of Surrealist poetry. “Insomnia Trials” consists of 16 poems that are divided into two sections, a section of …

Cognitive Processes Of Surrealist Poetry In Light Of Hegel & Insomniac Trials, Edward T. Rogers

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

This thesis project pursues the stylistic nature of Surrealist writing and provides deeper understanding into how one may interpret Surrealist poetry. My work consists of two written components: an analytical essay concerning how Hegelian philosophy is applicable to the understanding and interpretation of Surrealist expression and a collection of original Surrealist poems titled “Insomnia Trials.” My essay introduces Surrealism then further discusses the processes of Surrealist writing by analyzing the Hegelian dialectic and demonstrating how it corresponds to the interpretation and manifestation of Surrealist poetry. “Insomnia Trials” consists of 16 poems that are divided into two sections, a section of …

Poetic Leadership, A Territory Of Aesthetic Consciousness And Change, R. Amrit Kasten-Daryanani

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

Poetic leadership is a new theoretical construct that views leadership as an activity that unites a lyrical intellect with keenly felt emotion for the purpose of producing changes in the consciousness of self and others. This change begins within the interiority of self, moving surely to broader realms of one's surroundings and society, provoking movement that impacts the developing potential of the individual and the cultural milieu in which they exist. Emotion is the primary trace into consciousness used in this dissertation, which serves to unite experiences of the heart with experiences of the mind. The unification of these disparate …

Words In Blood, Like Flowers: Philosophy And Poetry, Music And Eros In Hölderlin, Nietzsche, And Heidegger, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

Between Hölderlin And Heidegger: Nietzsche’S Transfiguration Of Philosophy, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

Writing And Reading In Philosophy, Law, And Poetry, James Boyd White

Book Chapters

In this paper I will treat a very general question, the nature of writing and what can be achieved by it, pursuing it in the three distinct contexts provided by philosophy, law, and poetry.

My starting-point will be Plato's Phaedrus, where, in a wellknown passage, Socrates attacks writing itself: he says that true philosophy requires the living engagement of mind with mind of a kind that writing cannot attain. Yet this is obviously a paradox, for Socrates' position is articulated and recorded by Plato in writing. How then can we make sense of what Plato is saying and doing? What …

Biblical Terrorism: With A Platonic Deconstruction, Howard P. Kainz

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Superior Instants: Religious Concerns In The Poetry Of Emily Dickinson, Elisabeth Buckner

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

When I decided to write a thesis on Emily Dickinson's poetry, my intention was to show that she did, indeed, implement a concrete philosophy into her poetry. However, after several months of research, I realized that this poet's philosophy was ongoing and sometimes inconsistent. Emily Dickinson never discovered the answers to all of her religious and spiritual questions although she devoted her entire life to that pursuit. What Dickinson did discover was that orthodox religion had no place in her heart or mind and she must make her own choices where God was concerned. Immortality was an intense fascination to …

From The Sublime To The Political: Some Historical Notes, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Let me document my suggestion that modernist poetics tends to give a privileged position to what has traditionally been known as the sublime by adducing two examples from rather disparate traditions. Martin Heidegger's ontological poetics can reasonably be viewed as a renewal of the aesthetics of the sublime -- although Heidegger never uses the term sublime, so far as I know -- and is explicitly hostile to the limitations of aesthetics, conceived as an autonomous study of a certain kind of experience. Harold Bloom does recur to the Romantic terminology of sublimity in his attempt to construct a poetics which …

Some Genres Of Post-Hegelian Philosophy, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

There are a number of important texts, sometimes treated as philosophical and sometimes as literary works, which do not usually find an appropriate audience. Paradigms of what I have in mind are: Kierkegaard's pseudonymous writings, almost all of Nietzsche, Marx's narratives of capital and class-struggle, Sartre's complex series of fictions, plays, treatises, critical performances and autobiography, and Heidegger's hypnotic meditations and textual exegeses. Responses by philosophers, especially Anglo-American ones, seldom take account of the specific literary forms of these works or of their authors’ very self-conscious concern with the problems and strategies of writing. It is true that the texts …

Hegel On The Meanings Of Poetry, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Since Socrates' attack on poetry, philosophers and critics have been faced with the problem of reconciling two convictions which seem equally pressing. While poetry (or imaginative literature) is and has been valued as a source of insight and knowledge, it also seems clear that poetic meaning is of a rather different sort than that found in science, ordinary language, or (to introduce the classical contrast) prose. Philosophical theories of poetry, then, take one of two forms: either they deny one of these two beliefs, implying perhaps that poetry has only nonsensical or literal meaning, or they provide a cognitive analysis …

Phantastes Chapter 16: Life And The Ideal, Friedrich Von Schiller

German Romantic and Other Influences

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805) was a German writer, primarily known as a dramatist, poet, and literary critic. Das Ideal und das Leben (Life and the Ideal, 1795) is a philosophical poem. The Oxford Reference reports that the poem was “first published in 1795 in No. 9 of Die Horen, with the title ‘Das Reich der Schatten’. Schiller changed this in 1800 to ‘Das Reich der Formen’, and adopted the present title in 1804.” Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), writer and politician, translated the poem in 1844 as Ideal and Actual Life. Bulwer-Lytton began his novel Paul Clifford …