Hegel's Rhythm: Speculative Thinking and the Relationship between Philosophy and Poetry

Hegel's Rhythm: Speculative Thinking and the Relationship between Philosophy and Poetry

Audio recording of a lecture given by Andy Davis on September 6, 2024 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "What can poetry teach us about the demands of writing and reading philosophy? In this talk I explore this question through the lens of a few paragraphs at the end of Hegel’s preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, with some passing references to his account of poetry in the Aesthetics lectures. Hegel’s puzzling account of 'der spekulative Satz' [the speculative sentence/proposition] employs a comparison to poetic rhythm in paragraph sixty-one. Just as poetry plays formal meters off of natural accents, speculative expressions of philosophical content rely on a productive conflict between the form of the proposition (subject is predicate) and the unity of the Concept in which such differentiations between subjects, objects and qualities disappear. Poetry provides a model of unity in conflict that produces a 'floating center' of meaning. What might it mean for philosophical thinking to likewise embrace a 'floating center'?"

Santa Fe, NM

2024-09-06

Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.

sound

English

SF_DavisA_Hegel's_Rhythm_2024-09-06

m4a

00:50:25