Philosopher and Poet are One and the Same

Abstract

The article presents the author’s understanding of the relationship between philosophy and poetry. Philosophy not only originated as the poetry of the pre-Socratics, but it could never cease to be poetry. A true thinker and a true poet are ultimately the same thing, such classics as M. Heidegger or S. Bulgakov insisted in the last century. Logical speculation is not enough to solve philosophical problems, and there are not enough means of objectifying discursive thinking. It is impossible to understand the mystery of evil and innocent suffering if we isolate ourselves from them by some theory of evil and a rational explanation of suffering. It is impossible to talk about the mystery of beauty or the human personality if instead we deal only with the concept of personality or beauty as a subject of knowledge, viewed by the researcher from the outside. These mysteries can be understood only through living participation in them: they need to be experienced and experienced, and not objectified, not analytically dissected as a “simple scale”. That is why philosophy resorts to a special, non-objectifying mode of speech – poetic speech. Poetry is not a monologue of the author, it is eventful in a double sense of the word: in the words of the poet, as in a live conversation, existence itself expresses itself. Nature, beauty or suffering do not stand before the poet as a subject of study and do not double in his ideas about them, but they come true with him, speak for themselves in his words. The poet’s word does not give a true description of the world, but the world, which itself is essentially a word, comes true in poetry as a true, unsaid word. To find this word and make it sound together with the human word is a matter of philosophy, which then turns out to be poetry when it does not model the world, but calls it to dialogue as being uncovered.