Beginning with Plato's expulsion of the poets in the Republic, this dissertationlooks at the often hostile, yet also symbiotic, relationship between poetry andphilosophy. Aristotle's 'response' to Plato is regarded as a significant origin ofliterary theory. Nietzsche's critique of Western philosophy as being an attempt tosuppress its own metaphoricity, leads to a revaluation of truth and consequentlyof the privileging of philosophy over poetry. Post-structuralism sometimesoveremphasizes this constitutive force of metaphoricity, at the expense ofconceptual modes. However, Derrida's notion of philosophy as play retains abalance between concept and metaphor: there is no attempt to transcendentallyground philosophy, but neither is it reduced to a merely metaphorical discourse.Finally, Wittgenstein's notion of meaning as determined by use can help usdistinguish pragmatically between poetry and philosophy by looking at thecontexts in which they function.
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