Philosophy and poetry in the thought of María Zambrano

Abstract

Since its beginning, philosophy has established various relationships with poetry which are sometimes strained, at times less so and sometimes almost from complete oblivion. From Greece poetry started to be denounced: however, from the so-called crisis of reason it became essential to reopen and to rethink the relationship between philosophy and poetry. In this uncertain trajectory, but especially due to the desire to find such a relation, philosophy refused to look toward science as the only source of certainty and conviction and it dared, rather, to descend into the abyss and to dialogue with poetry. From now on it would seek, in poetry and in the arts, a way of finding itself again and even reestablishing its foundation. In the same way as Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, Marí­a Zambrano produces a critical reading of the philosophical tradition starting from her hypothesis of poetic reason. Marí­a Zambrano considers philosophy and poetry to be two halves of man, two halves in constant confrontation. Two halves which, it would seem, announce the totality of the human being and which is glimpsed, perhaps, as being unattainable; a totality which recalls the platonic Eros in The Banquet and Nietzsche's musical Socrates.