old quarrel between - School of Political Science and International ...

The Political Implications of the ‘old quarrel between
philosophy and poetry’
Jeff Payne
Introduction
In The Republic Plato writes, ‘there is an old quarrel between philosophy and
poetry’ (Plato, 2003). Although much of The Republic and many other of
Plato’s works are centrally concerned with this ‘quarrel’, today the meaning
and significance of this conflict is difficult to appreciate. Why, for example,
present ‘philosophy’ as being in some way opposed to or in conflict with
‘poetry’? Why should such a ‘quarrel’ be of such importance so as to occupy
the greatest thinkers of the time and result in the death of Socrates? What, if
anything, does this struggle mean for political practice? The need to find
answers to these questions is pressing if it is acknowledged that the ‘quarrel’
between philosophy and poetry is being fought-out in contemporary society.
Indeed, post-enlightenment turns to language, culture, history and praxis 1 ,
must be seen as only the latest moves in this ongoing quarrel. In short, every
student of politics needs to know about the ‘old quarrel’ if they are to
understand the ‘new quarrel’ between empiricism and post-empiricism. That
is, if we really are moving beyond modernity, and in some senses towards
politics, then this movement must be understood as only part of the ongoing
struggle between ‘philosophy’ and ‘poetry’. If students of politics are to
understand the writings of Foucault, Gadamer, Habermas and Derrida, then
they must be familiar with this ongoing struggle that is played out today in
every area of our society, from education policy to war.
1 Praxis is often translated as ‘practical concern’ or simply ‘action’. Aristotle used the term to apply to
a way of being that is concerned with what is good not just for the individual but for oriented towards a
common good or the good life.
Dialogue (2007) 5:1, pp 26-44

In this article I will show that the historical, and apparently transient, victory
of philosophy over poetics is the most important political event in history. This
conclusion, of course, suggests that there is much more at stake in the
quarrel between ‘philosophy’ and ‘poetry’ than simply a style of writing.
Indeed, I hope to show that the political portrayal of poiesis 2 itself, as
exhaustively manifested in ‘poetry’, was only an aspect of an attempt to close
off the domain of potential 3 . What is achieved with the victory of philosophy
over poetics, significantly progressed through the work of Plato and later
Aristotle, is the prioritizing of ‘knowledge’ over ‘imagination’, ‘actuality’ over
‘potential’, ‘presence’ over ‘presencing’, and ‘being’ over ‘becoming’. In short
what is achieved with the victory of philosophy is the beginning of the
western ‘metaphysical’ tradition which, Derrida identifies, as ‘the
determination of being as . . . the constant of a presence – eidos, arche,
telos, energeia, ousia (essence, existence, substance, subject) aletheia,
transcendentality, consciousness, or conscience, God, man, and so forth”
(Derrida, 1981: 249). This trajectory closes off the domain of politics, the
region of truly critical analysis, and the possibility for seeing innovation. The
need for understanding, in adequate terms, the nature of the quarrel between
philosophy and poetry is one of the most important lessons that students of
politics can learn. Simply put, what is at stake in this struggle is, quite
literally, everything. That is, everything is revealed in particular ways,
theoretically, in practice, in production, and what is at stake is how
2 Poiesis is a highly contested word that is often translated as ‘production’ or ‘poetic’. The pre-Socratic
meaning, Heidegger suggests, is that it is a ‘bringing-forth’ from not being to being. Plato, in The
Symposium, also suggests that poiesis used to be understood more broadly than merely the ‘poetic’.
Throughout this text this word will take on different meanings depending on how it is deployed. This
re-contextualisation of the word is itself ‘poetic’.
3 Potential or dunamis is, once again, a hotly contested term and one central to the debate introduced in
this work. Aristotle introduces the distinction in the aftermath of Plato’s criticisms of the ‘poets’ as a
default position in opposition to energeia or actuality or activity. The sense used in Aristotle is that of
eyes having the potential to ‘see’ but when they are ‘seeing’, in the activity of seeing, then they are
being ‘actually’ what they are. Marx uses these terms in the sense of something being only potentially
this or that but in practice it becomes actually what it is.
Dialogue (2007) 5:1 27

everything, the environment, others, and even ourselves, understood as such,
are at stake in the struggle between philosophy and poetry.
More than a matter of style but a way of ‘disclosure’
It is important to emphasize from the outset that there is much more at stake
in the quarrel between ‘poetics’ and ‘philosophy’ than some contemporary
sense of ‘style’ or ‘form’ of writing. The distinction between ‘poetry’ and
‘philosophy’ is not the same as the formal distinctions today between ‘essay
writing’ and ‘journalism’ or between a ‘scientific report’ and ‘creative prose’. It
is, therefore, correct to think of the nature of the struggle between
philosophy and poetry as being concerned in one sense with ‘style’ (lexis), as
evidenced by Plato’s account of style in The Republic when he writes, “We
must next deal with its style of presentation, and so cover both what is to be
said and how it is to be said” (Plato, 2003: 392c6), but this ‘style’, as I hope
to show, is concerned with the way the world is shown to be through the
accounts being given and where authority and legitimacy for these accounts
rest. The meaning of ‘style’ being used here is more like the sense of ‘style’
when we speak of ‘styles’ of clothing or ‘fashion’. That is, things are shown
according to ‘fashion’, in the dual sense of this word, as both a ‘shaping’ and
‘style’ (Agamben, 1999: 194-195). With the event of a new ‘fashion’ in
clothing things take on a different appearance, for example, what is ‘ugly’ or
‘stylish’ is understood differently in light of the new ‘style’. Different
authorities will be raised and old authorities will be questioned and even
forgotten. It is this sense of ‘style’ or ‘fashion’ that is most characteristic of
the struggle between philosophy and poetry.
There is a danger in drawing an analogy between the shift in world disclosure
and changes in styles of clothing. With such flippant analogies the significance
of this ‘quarrel’ may be lost. As the trial and sentencing of Socrates proves,
people were prepared to kill and die to achieve their aims in this struggle as
Dialogue (2007) 5:1 28

they recognized it was a struggle for not only the ‘future’ but the ‘past’ and
the ‘present’. The importance of the temporary victory of philosophy over
poetry is confirmed every time Socrates, Plato and Aristotle are listed as the
greatest thinkers in history. If we understand the victory of philosophy as the
dominant ‘style’ of world disclosure then Whitehead’s insightful phrase of
reverence that, "The safest general characterization of the European
philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato"
(Whitehead, 1978: 39) resonates with a new, even sinister, significance. A
particular, and for the times new, kind of disclosure occurs in the writings of
Plato and Aristotle that comes to dominate thought for the next two and half
thousand years. It is the nature of this struggle and what is at stake that I will
try to identify in what follows. I will first present Plato’s attack on the poets. I
will then argue why Plato’s argument is inadequate. In light of this
inadequacy, I will then present a different understanding of poetics that tries
to move outside of metaphysics and discuss what this movement means for
‘politics’.
Plato and the Poetic
Plato argued that “. . . the only poetry that should be allowed in a state are
hymns to the gods and paeans in praise of good men; once you go beyond
that and admit the sweet lyric or epic muse, pleasure and pain become your
rulers instead of law and the rational principles commonly accepted as best”
(Plato, 2003: 607a2-6). Plato is arguing that the powerful emotional
experience of poetry makes people act as though they were ‘out of their
minds’ and, in this condition, people could not make reasonable judgments
regarding what was ‘right’ and ‘good’. Plato argued that the influence of
poetry had historically been pervasive on Greek culture and had often been
extremely harmful. The danger, according to Plato, was that in this ecstatic
state people may come to accept as true knowledge what, in fact, neither the
poets nor the listeners could actually know. It was for this reason that the
Dialogue (2007) 5:1 29

most important feature of Plato's Republic was that it excluded all poetic
representation (Plato, 2003: 595a).
Although the struggle between philosophy and poetics is a central theme
throughout the writings of Plato, - indeed throughout Western history - for
the sake of brevity I will focus on the dialogue Ion where many of the central
themes of philosophies conflicts with poetics are presented. In this dialogue,
Socrates asserts that if the reader or listener of poetry is to judge the quality
of a poem they must have knowledge about what the poet claims. If the poet
is speaking about ‘medicine’, for example, then in order for the listener, or
exegete 4 , to say that it is correct then they must know about medicine but, as
Socrates argues, the person who needs to be consulted regarding issues of
health is not a poet but a physician. In the same way that if we, as listeners
at a seminar, are to judge a presentation to be ‘good’ then we, as listeners,
would need to have knowledge about the subject matter that is being
presented. Socrates is therefore questioning the poet’s and the rhapsode’s 5
claim to have episteme (knowledge) in a techne (skill, art) which, Socrates
argues, the poet or the rhapsode does not possess. As neither the poet nor
the explicator of the poet’s work has knowledge of the skills about which they
speak then neither can judge the beauty, correctness or worth of the work.
That is, nobody, not even the poet, knows what a ‘good’ poem is as they are
not knowledgeable about what they write, say or hear, and therefore, it is
dangerous to listen to poets such as Homer for informing the way one lives
their life.
To defend himself against Socrates claims, the character Ion initially accepts
the argument that poets and the rhapsode receive divine inspiration and are
therefore possessed (Plato, 1987: 533e4). According to this argument, which
4 Exegete is a person who performs an extensive and critical interpretation of any text.
5 A ‘rhapsode’ in ancient Greece was a professional reciter of poetry, especially the epics of Homer.
Dialogue (2007) 5:1 30

is developed further by Plato in other works, the appreciators, performers and
writers of poetry are out of their ‘right minds’ “. . . like Bacchic women, who
when possessed and out of their senses draw milk and honey from rivers . . .”
(Plato, 1987: 534a3). Good poets are drawn away by the Gods who use them
as ‘ministers’ through whom they talk to the people in order to make them do
what they want. The rhapsode then interprets this message directly too the
people. If this is the case, and Ion appears to initially be sympathetic if not
enthusiastic with this account, then there can be no ‘argument’ for why Ion
thinks Homer’s work is beautiful as a result that both Homer and Ion have
been inspired by Gods to appreciate and write poetry. The reason for divine
inspiration is not available to mortals. This divine madness does not permit
rational judgments. Socrates uses the simile that this relationship between
the divine, the poet, the rhapsode and the audience is like metal rings that
become magnetized by being in contact with other metal rings that, in turn,
touch a magnetic source. Although Ion readily agrees that when he recites
Homer’s poetry he is in a state of divine inspiration he hesitates at the
conclusion that whenever he appreciates or discusses Homer’s work then he
is being irrational and ‘mad’. Ion wants to defend the skill of the poet and the
rhapsode and, if it is a skill, then it is reasonable.
In the dialogue Ion, Plato presents Socrates as suggesting that nobody, not
even the poet, can reasonably judge a poem to be beautiful. The reason is
that the poet, the rhapsode and the audience lack adequate knowledge about
what the poem discusses to be justified in judging the worth of the work. We
may, as experts in a particular art or craft, have limited access to being able
to judge a poem as beautiful but we can never know about all the separate
arts being represented in an epic poem and therefore nobody, not even the
poet, can judge the worth of what is being portrayed. The only hope
presented by Socrates as to how people can judge poetry and that is to
suggest that everyone is captured by a divine madness that permits access to
Dialogue (2007) 5:1 31

the gifts of the Gods but this gift is a kind of irrationality that does not permit
reasonable judgment about the beauty of the poem. There can be no
reasonable exegesis of the poem and its worth as it is purely divine
inspiration and, therefore, beyond reasonable discussion.
From this account in Ion, and from what is written in Plato’s Republic, some
insight can be gleaned on both the issue of how to understand the struggle
between ‘philosophers’ and ‘poets’ and the political ramifications of this
‘struggle’. What is at stake is an issue of authority for educating people and,
therefore, for informing future actions. That is, should authority rest with
‘poetic’ guardians or ‘philosopher’ guardians? Who has adequate ‘knowledge’
or insight of ‘reality’ for informing future actions? Do poets or philosophers
give the best account of how the world is and, therefore, how it should be?
Indeed, the more fundamental question raised is not simply which style
permits the best access to the world (if this phrasing is not already too
philosophical) but on what grounds do we judge? Although in this dialogue
Socrates does not give answers to these questions, but simply raises them,
his style of inquiry and the form of his criticisms are, as Nietzsche observed
(1993: 65), extremely suggestive. Socrates appears to be arguing that if you
want to know about health then speak to an expert physician and not a poet.
In this move Socrates is prioritizing ‘knowledge’ above the ‘divine inspiration’
that appears to inform the poet. The ground of judgment, according to
Socrates, is the force of the argument and the reasons for a belief and not
the traditional and emotive response encouraged by poets. The question that
becomes central to inquiry after the philosophical turn is no longer simply
what someone believes but why do people believe it, as Nietzsche writes,
. . . there is a profound illusion which first entered the world in the
person of Socrates - the unshakable belief that rational thought,
guided by causality, can penetrate to the depths of being, and
that it is capable not only of knowing but even of correcting being
Dialogue (2007) 5:1 32

(Nietzsche, 1993: 73).
The Birth of Western Metaphysics
The central and ultimately quite simple error that is expressed by Plato’s
Socrates is that he fails to recognize the skill of the poet to move beyond and
before ‘reason’. Indeed, that the poet has no skills at all, in contrast to
cabinet makers, architects and physicians, is another way of presenting
Socrates argument (Plato, 1987). In this section I will try to give an account
of the skill of the poet.
What skill is expressed in poetry? This question could be put; what techne is
expressed in poiesis? This again, deploying widely accepted translations,
could be written as; what skill or art is expressed in making or production?
These series of questions, if we accept them as equivalent, suggest that there
is a relationship between poetry and production. It is this kind of
understanding that appears to inform the Ion dialogue. That is, the physician
produces health, the firelighter produces fire while the poet produces, well,
nothing but passionate deceptions. The poet simply does not have the skills
to produce anything ‘real’. If the poet claims to know what is right and good it
must be a deception as the poet does not have the specific skills to actually
produce anything. This understanding of the role of the poet is harmonious
with the account given by Plato in The Republic where what is produced by
God is the most real, followed by the thing produced by technites and, finally,
the ‘representation’ produced by the poets, as Plato writes,
So the tragic poet, if his art is representation, is by nature at third
removed from the throne of truth; and the same is true of all
other representative artists . . . The art of representation is
therefore a long way removed from truth, and it is able to
reproduce everything because it has little grasp of anything, and
that little is of a mere phenomenal appearance. For example, a
painter can paint a portrait of a shoemaker or a carpenter or any
Dialogue (2007) 5:1 33

other craftsman without understanding any of their crafts; yet, if
he is skilful enough, his portrait of a carpenter may, at a distance,
deceive children or simple people into thinking it is a real
carpenter (Plato, 2003: 339-340).”
The interesting line in the above quote is that Plato suggests that the poet or
artists represents nothing but ‘mere phenomenal appearance’. Unlike the
carpenter who produces a real bed, which remains a bed from every
particular perspective, the poet reproduces only what is seen from a particular
perspective.
To move towards a different answer to the question ‘what techne is
expressed in poiesis?’ than ‘mere representations’ there needs to be a
distinction emphasized between ‘use’ and ‘production’ or between ‘praxis’ and
‘poiesis’. Plato acknowledges that there is a distinction between the producer
and the user. According to Plato the producer does not have ‘real’ knowledge
but only ‘belief’ while ‘the person with the relevant knowledge is the user’
(Plato, 2003: 344). Aristotle develops this distinction further suggesting the
need to identify a clear difference between ‘practical wisdom’ and ‘technical
knowledge’ (Aristotle, 1949 Book VI). To simplify the distinction for the sake
of explanation, there could be both a practical and technical knowledge of
riding a bike. A person may be very good at riding a bike but is unable to
articulate what is demanded in riding a bike while a person with technical
skills will be able to teach others as they would have explicit knowledge of
how to ride. These two ways of knowing do not necessarily co-inside, for
example, I might be able to teach someone how to play tennis without being
able to play. The higher form of knowledge, the knowledge that has
precedence in determining future production for both Plato and Aristotle, is
practical knowledge over techne as the user can assess the quality of things.
With this distinction in mind, there may be an easier comparison between the
Dialogue (2007) 5:1 34

technical skills of soldiers compared to what poets say about soldiering. Plato
argues that a soldier can talk about soldiering, that they can teach soldiering
to the next generation of guardians, because they have been soldiers. The
poet, in contrast, has never been a soldier and therefore has no knowledge of
soldiering except as a representation from a particular perspective. This whole
argument rests on the assumption that what the poet speaks about is the
technical skill of soldiering. That is, if the poet only represents what is already
present, as the example of Plato’s ‘bed’ suggests, then the poet may only give
a representation of the already present bed and therefore the poet brings to
appearance nothing real but only appearances of the phenomenon.
The problem with this account is that poetry does not talk about the technical
skills of soldiering, the poetic is not concerned with ‘production’ at all, but
with the heroic, the brave and the cowardly. That is, a soldier may be very
skilled at soldiering but, what the poet ‘produces’, to remain within this
language, is to show the soldiering in light of being heroic, brave or cowardly.
So when Plato’s Socrates writes that poets have no knowledge about the
subjects about which they speak, he ignores the creative power of the poet of
bringing things into appearance so that it can become ‘knowledge’, as
Edelman writes, ‘art generates the ideas about leadership, bravery,
cowardice, altruism, dangers, authority, and fantasies about the future that
people typically assume to be reflections . . .’ (Edelman, 1995: 2-3). Plato’s
Socrates begins all their discussions regarding the limitations of poets with
the ‘things’ already present. In Ion, as already discussed, Socrates questions
Ion regarding the issue of having adequate knowledge about various subjects
but this ‘knowledge’ is only possible in regards to what is already present or
what has already been shown. It is always knowledge about a particular thing
such as ‘health’. What the poet brings to presence is what is not already
present as such. For example, a soldier might know that they must hold
position in the face of the enemy at all costs as a technical skill and as an act
Dialogue (2007) 5:1 35

of bravery but when a particular soldier breaks position it takes a poet to
show that this act was not ‘cowardly’ at all but that it was actually ‘brave’. It
is the poet and the artist that brings the actual to appearance.
The struggle between philosophy and poetics is a struggle between origins
and priorities. To begin with what is already ‘known’ about the world or to
begin with what is already present is to priorities an abstract universalism.
That is, what a thing actual is, according to the philosophers, is determined
prior to it being realized. To begin with what precedes presence, with
potentiality, which Aristotle associates throughout Book Theta of the
Metaphysics (Aristotle, 1998) with science, art and craft, is the techne that is
expressed in poiesis. Nietzsche provocatively writes,
If we wish to consider Socrates . . . we need only see him as the
prototype of a new and unimagined life-form, the prototype of
theoretical man . . . Like the artist, theoretical man takes an
infinite delight in everything that exists . . . Whenever the truth is
uncovered, the artist gazes enraptured at whatever covering
remains, but theoretical man takes delight and satisfaction in the
covering that has been cast aside . . . (1993: 72)
According to Nietzsche, ‘theoretical man’, the person of science, ‘uncovers’ in
the same way as poet/artists, the difference is that the scientist stares
mesmerized by the covering that has been thrown away. In contrast the
artist/poet takes delight in interrogating the covering that remains. The poet,
Nietzsche is arguing, remains interested in what remains concealed, as the
‘thing’ that is not present as anything. In contrast the ‘theoretical man’, like
Socrates and the western metaphysical tradition, is concerned with the
‘covering’, the ‘knowledge’ that has already been disclosed and therefore ‘cast
aside’. The scientific approach is initially poetic itself but then becomes
mesmerized by the ‘knowledge’. They look away from or forget the concealed
and become fixated by the spectacle, as Arendt writes expressing this
Dialogue (2007) 5:1 36

eversal,
. . . I am concerned only with the fact that the Platonic tradition of
philosophical as well as political thought started with a reversal,
and that this original reversal determined to a large extent the
thought patterns into which Western philosophy almost
automatically fell wherever it was not animated by a great and
original philosophical impetus. Academic philosophy, as a matter
of fact, has ever since been dominated by the never-ending
reversals of idealism and materialism, of transcendentalism and
immanentism, of realism and nominalism, of hedonism and
asceticism, and so on. What matters here is the reversibility of all
these systems, that they can be turned ‘upside down’ or ‘downside
up’ at any moment in history without requiring for such reversal
either historical events or changes in the structural elements
involved (1989: 292).
This initial reversal informs the continued prioritizing of ‘reason/method’
over ‘truth’, ‘theory’ over ‘practice’ and ‘being’ over ‘becoming’. The
question is how is the ‘reversal’ of which Arendt writes to be
understood. Importantly, as Arendt emphasizes, the reversal in priority
does is not the result of ‘material’ or ‘structural’ changes but can be
achieved at any moment in history. That is, it is not ‘crisis’ or ‘need’ that
in some way necessitate a reprioritizing but its reversal has a different
origin. What does this mean?
Politics as a Response to Metaphysics
Although Plato often discusses poetry, poiesis, as being exhaustively
associated with a literary product he does present a broader account of this
word that is more harmonious with the pre-Socratic understanding. In The
Symposium (Plato, 1999: 205b-c) Plato presents Diotima as suggesting
poiesis is manifold and denotes all causing of the passage from non-being to
being. This wider usage includes what will come to be known as ‘production’
in every technai (skill) by every kind of demiurge (craftsperson) although, as
Diotima acknowledges, it is generally used by that time only to identify music
Dialogue (2007) 5:1 37

(Ford, 1981: 297). This account is harmonious with the use of poiesis in the
work of early Greek writers such as the poet Homer who used the word for
various kinds of what we would today call building and manufacture such as
when Hephaestus fashions the shield of Achilles (Ford, 1981: 300). Ford
argues that focusing the word poiesis narrowly to mean only a literary
creation allowed the Socratic/Platonic criticism of poiesis, and the poetic
generally, as being a kind of pleasurable deception (Ford, 1981: 298). That is,
the portrayal of the poetic in a particular light as ‘poetry’ was itself a poetic
act - a bringing to appearance in a particular way.
Heidegger also identifies poiesis as meaning more than poetry. Heidegger
rejects associating the poetic with fabrication or production of any kind but
argues that it is best understood as ‘bringing-forth’. According to Heidegger
poiesis, which includes any act of presencing, is a ‘bringing-forth’ into
appearance, as Heidegger writes,
It is of utmost importance that we think bringing-forth in its full
scope and at the same time in the sense in which the Greeks
thought it. Not only handcraft manufacture, not only artistic and
poetical bringing in to appearance and concrete imagery, is a
bringing forth, poiesis. Physis, also, the arising of something from
out of itself, is a bringing-forth, poiesis (1993: 317).
According to this account it can be seen that in the ‘quarrel between
philosophy and poetry’ there is much more at stake than even Plato is
prepared to acknowledge. What is at stake is the way the world as a whole is
brought forward into appearance as what it is, as again Heidegger writes,
“The poetical brings the true into the splendor of what Plato in the Phaedrus
calls to ekphanestaton, that which shines forth most purely (Heidegger, 1993:
340).” This poiesis, the poetic as such, includes the bringing-forth or the
presencing of everything that ‘is’ from language, laws and the visible culture
through to tables and chairs. Bernard Stiegler recognizes the broad scope of
Dialogue (2007) 5:1 38

poiesis when he writes, “As production (poiesis), technics is a ‘way of
revealing’. Like poiesis, it brings into being what is not (Stiegler, 1998: 9).”
Here Stiegler is aligning ‘technics’ with ‘poiesis’ which is harmonious with the
account given by Aristotle, who writes,
All art (techne) is concerned with coming into being, i.e. with
contributing and considering how something may come into
being which is capable of either being or not being, and whose
origin is in the maker and not in the thing made . . . (Aristotle,
1949: 1140a10-14)
The difference with Aristotle’s account and Heidegger/Stiegler’s is that the
bringing to presence, the showing of what is ‘there’, is no longer understood
as ‘making’ but is a way of showing, a dis-covery, a plac-ing as dis-play. In
the Metaphysics Aristotle argues that, sciene and craft are ‘rational’ ways of
letting things be seen, as he writes, “Hence it is that all crafts and productive
branches of sciences are potentialities, given that they are principles of
change . . . (1998: 1046b2)”
The point that these thinkers are making is that all poiesis, every poetic
event, is a bringing to appearance. The physician brings health to appearance
and the architect brings the home forward as a home in the same way, I have
argued elsewhere (Payne, Forthcoming), as the policy analyst tries to bring
forward to appearance the ethos of a community. Poiesis brings to
appearance what has already ‘appeared’ naturally, such as, ‘health’, ‘wellbeing’
and ‘homeliness’. What occurs in Plato’s work is that poiesis becomes
reduced to ‘poetry’ and distorted as a kind of ‘representation’ which is then
contrasted to ‘real’ production. It is this distortion that allows Plato to raise
‘knowledge’, understood as what is already present and enduring, above the
open space of potential which, in turn, becomes merely the domain of
linguistic and artistic ‘representation’. Plato, the aristocrat, appears to want to
Dialogue (2007) 5:1 39

aise the existing ‘present’ knowledge as the enduring while devaluing the
domain of innovation, change or potentia. The reason for Plato’s argument is
perhaps captured by Edelman when he writes, “The classification therefore
misleads opinion about the origins of problems, their effects, their scope, and
effective remedies. At the same time, the conventional categories are
effective in winning and maintaining public support for established hierarchies
and inequalities . . . (Edelman, 1995: 112)”
It can therefore be seen that the political implications of poetics are not fully
realized if it is situated only as an exploration of the effects of ‘poetry’. To
suggest that poetry in some way challenges existing conceptualizations is true
but limited if it is recognized that the pre-Socratic understanding of poetics
included any and all ‘bringing-forth’ into appearance. So whenever, for
example, a policy includes same-sex relationships as ‘family’ or identifies a
violent act as ‘terrorism’ then, in being innovative, the poetic as disclosure is
at work. All these acts, if they bring to appearance the ethos of a community,
are poetic. That politics is continuously concerned with showing things ‘now
this way now that’ is evidence that poetics has everything to do with the true
dignity of politics and what it means to be human. That is, politics can be
conceived as the actualizing of the polis as the space where humans live. This
dignity is lost if politics remains only concerned with technical or moral
concerns. Politics, in its most vibrant and innovative form, is fundamentally
poetic in showing the world in particular ways. The task of politics is to show
the nobility in war or the destruction of drought. Politics is poetics that is
given voice in policy. If we misunderstand policy as a technological matter,
and begin with existing knowledge to inform policy decisions, then the
intimacy demanded of politics disappears. The quarrel between the
philosophers and the poets is not a thing of the past but is most relevant to
contemporary concerns.
Dialogue (2007) 5:1 40

Conclusion
It can be seen from what has been outlined that what is at stake in the
struggle between philosophy and poetry is much more than a style of writing.
What is at play is a style of disclosure, a style of revealing, if we equate ‘style’
with ‘way’ (in terms of a style of clothing as a way of dressing). What is at
stake is literally and exhaustively everything. That is, is it a ‘drought’ or is it
‘natural’, is the ‘war’ on ‘terror’ a ‘war’ at all and what does it mean to fight
‘terror’? From this perspective everything that is, in how it appears as it does,
is the result of politics. Plato, through the character of Socrates, tries to argue
that poetry is inadequate for showing things as it claims to have knowledge
about matters that it not only does not have but cannot have. Nobody can be
an expert at everything, we are after all mere mortals, and so the range of
Homer’s poetry is too broad for anyone, even the poets, to understand. It is
therefore easy for the emotions created by the rhapsode through the poem to
confuse people over what is right. As a result poetry is presented as being
dangerously deceptive and consisting of nothing but myths. The emotional
response demanded by poetry does not allow the clear and sober use of
reason to decide what is ‘good’ and ‘right’. This line of argument prioritizes
‘knowledge’, as what is already present as technics, by not recognizing that
the techne of poetry is a ‘way of revealing’ or a style of appropriation. This
pre-Socratic understanding of poiesis, as any bringing forward into
appearance including language, is lost through an increasing commitment to
a metaphysics where what is produced is the result of ‘knowledge’ demanding
a ‘reason’ that is, therefore, already and always present (the Platonic Ideal).
The implications of the victory of philosophy over poetics for politics cannot
be overstated. Through twists and turns the commitment to starting with
‘whatness’ and moving to the ‘why’ is the basis for modern science and most
policy development. I have tried to show that by understanding the poetic, as
such, that the real dignity of politics becomes visible as a response to
Dialogue (2007) 5:1 41

metaphysics.
Jeff Payne is PhD candidate at the University of Queensland.
Dialogue (2007) 5:1 42

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