Poetry can be used to express the content of philosophy. From the way of expressing meaning, philosophical poems can be divided into the following two types.
The first one is used to directly express some philosophical thought. The philosophical thoughts contained in this kind of poetry can basically exist independently of the poetic form, and it is entirely possible to make a clear and accurate logical explanation of its meaning. Philosophical poems belonging to this type include Lucretius's Body Ethics, Pope's Ethics and Briggs's The Covenant of Beauty.
The second is to put philosophy into the poet's original poetic mood. The authors of such poems make full use of language, rhythm, association and other means to form a unique poetic mood and express some profound value, relationship or meaningful possibility; This philosophical significance cannot exist if it is divorced from the poetic artistic conception it contains. Poems belonging to this category include Shakespeare's King Lear, Keats' Ode to an Ancient Greek Urn, Eliot's Quartet and so on.
However, even if the theme of a poem is clear philosophy, it can never be completely equivalent to the philosophical explanation it expresses. If the words expressing meaning in a poem are strictly limited to explaining general topics in an abstract nature, then the poem is tantamount to a boring sermon, and the specific details it may use can only be used as metaphors, not poetic symbols. If a poem not only expresses a clear philosophy, but also is a beautiful poem, it is mainly due to the writer's superb language use, and his subtle opinions are expressed by poetic skills rather than logical ways, which makes the clear philosophy as the theme of poetry more profound and vivid. For example, Lucretius attracted atoms with meaningful images such as "the barrier of burning in the universe" and "the matching power of love", which made the boring atomism vividly expressed. These images are not only decorative, but also have their own cultural meanings: "Universe"-the awe of the God who rules the universe, "love"-the sweet quotation of love, and "agreement"-are related to the contract of ancient Rome.
The difference between the above two philosophical poems-explicit philosophical poems and implicit philosophical poems is the difference between "clear knowledge expression" and "clear poetry expression", that is, the difference between "philosophical meaning" and "poetic meaning". Eliot pointed out that although Dante's Divine Comedy and Thomas Aquinas' Introduction to Theology have the same philosophical meaning, people have different meanings when reading these two works, because Introduction to Theology is written with rational logic and Divine Comedy is written with perceptual logic. Eliot pointed out that the philosophical significance expressed in Dante's poems is closely related to the images he created.
Poetry can express the truth with its own unique poetic characteristics, so it can also be considered that poetry itself is philosophical. Aristotle in ancient Greece first put forward this view. In a famous paper, he declared: "Poetry is more philosophical than history, because poetry involves general problems and history involves special problems". Aristotle's assertion is obviously a response to Plato's denial of poetry in the Republic (volume 10). Plato believes that the external world is semi-real, it is only the image projected by the eternal form (or "absolute meaning" or "absolute ideal"), it is only its incomplete expression. He also believes that all kinds of literary forms are far from reality, because the author uses various artistic means (such as language, rhythm, painting, modeling, etc.). ) to express some parts of nature they choose at will. So their works are just "transcripts of transcripts". On the contrary, Aristotle believes that nature itself has the potential to develop all things, and has been turning these possibilities into reality to varying degrees. He pointed out in Physics that "art imitates nature on the one hand, and perfects its shortcomings on the other". The role of art in "perfecting the shortcomings of nature" shows that art itself is philosophical. Since artistic creativity is considered to be imitative, artistic creation also reflects the creation of nature. Later theorists expounded Aristotle's theory as follows: the universal philosophical principle expressed in poetry is to express the soul of nature, not the shell of nature, to express concrete rather than abstract concepts, and to create impulse rather than the result of completion.
In a word, Aristotle thinks that poetry reflects and develops the creative activities of nature. The German poet Goethe (1746- 1832) further developed this view. Goethe believes that there is evidence that the growth and evolution of natural organic matter and people's artistic creation activities have intrinsic purposes. The function of thought is not to impose subjective laws on the objective world, but to "explore their laws from objective things." It can be seen that the two creative processes of nature and art are consistent and similar, and both have "prototypes". But Goethe's "prototype" is not a concrete thing with a clear outline, but exists in something and is embodied through it. Therefore, this "prototype" can only be perceived through people's ears, eyes and minds. The function of thinking is to find concrete things that appear instantly in our real experience and are difficult to capture at ordinary times. Therefore, in essence, poetry has a certain revealing function, not because poetry directly tells the universal truth, but because poetry reveals the universal truth it embodies by capturing what appears instantly.
Some romantic theorists in Germany and Britain further demonstrated the philosophical nature of poetry from various angles. Some early German romantic writers (such as August William schlegel, Friedrich schlegel, Novalis, Schelling, etc.). ) tends to expand the concept of poetry, thus confusing the relationship between poetry and philosophy. August William schlegel believes that since everything in nature is interrelated, everything represents other things and reflects the panorama of nature to some extent. General perception can only see trees but not forests, but artistic imagination can break through the limitations and show us the real universe as a whole-a universe in which everything is always in motion, correlation, blending and transformation.
Novalis and Schelling described the integration and creativity of nature as love. Novalis equated this power with "the highest natural poem"; Schelling called it "the spirit of nature, a spirit that can only talk to us through symbols."
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, two later German philosophers, put forward new views on this issue. Schopenhauer believes that it is not love but will that makes nature run. The will of nature, from inorganic substances, plants, animals to human beings, can be divided into different levels; This level is determined by the "concept" representing a certain level of will. He defined art (including poetry) as some kind of knowledge about ideas, whose "sole purpose is to transmit knowledge". Therefore, the highest art and the highest philosophy are the same thing, because the purpose of both is to achieve a "painless state"-that is, "we can temporarily get rid of the hard pursuit of will." Nietzsche's theory (1844- 1900) describes this "will" more strongly and calls it "will to power". But he expanded the connotation of this concept, including the following different forms of expression, such as: fierce thunderstorm, budding spring branches, babies just coming out of the womb, advancing into the Prussian army, artists' creative sensitivity, saints' asceticism and so on. In artists, this "will to power" is manifested in enthusiasm for creation, pursuit of form and fantasy of universal laws. Nietzsche believes that fundamentally speaking, philosophy and poetry are two in one. Because "wisdom is like a woman" (representing philosophy), she will only favor "energetic and charming men" (representing poetry). What illuminates the road to truth is not an eloquent exposition, but a poetic epiphany.
In The Romantic Period, England, a common theme is to show the identity of poetry and philosophy. Shelley once declared that poets are "philosophers with supreme power"; Poetry is "all-encompassing, and it is the center of all knowledge". Coleridge added a qualification to this statement. He thinks that poets are philosophers in implicit sense, not in explicit sense. Both he and Wordsworth partly borrowed Kant's imagination theory as the basis of poetry with implicit philosophical views. Wordsworth believes that imagination is "the ability of poets to conceive and form individual forms, which embody universal ideas or abstract concepts." Coleridge further distinguishes between primary imagination and secondary imagination. Primary imagination is "the vitality and primitive power of all human senses"; The second imagination is the combination and reflection of the first imagination, which is guided and dominated by artistic purposes. The imagination used-whether primary (metaphysical) or secondary (artistic)-is the repetition of endless creative activities of the infinite self in the limited mind; Therefore, a real poet has a solid continuity between his philosophical insight and his poetry creation.
In the past few decades, there has been an anti-romantic trend of thought, which tends to deny the important connection between poetry and philosophy. Mcleish, an American poet, famously said, "Poetry is poetry and should not be meaningful", which revealed the tendency of many poets in the period of philosophical disorder. They believe that poets should be evaluated as creators rather than prophets. I·A· Richards provides the basis that poetry has nothing to do with philosophy from the perspective of semantics, and emphasizes that the function of poetry is to express feelings and attitudes.