Introduction to Philosophy -- Thinking and Poetizing

Thinking and Poetizing: Considerations for the Lecture

Thinking and Poetizing Considerations for the Lecture1 Introduction Thinking and Poetizing: Philosophy and Poetry (σοφία and ποιεῖν) It is necessary, from out of a dire need that is barely felt, to pay attention to thinking and poetizing with a few indications. The word “thinking,” used straightforwardly, means all thinking performed by those who are called “the thinkers.” Their ancient name is φιλόσοφοι, the philosophers. “Thinking ” understood straightforwardly is philosophy, φιλοσοφία. To be sure, the word “poetizing” can also have an even broader meaning, and can denote as much as the following: to fantasize [etwas erdichten] or to invent something with the purpose of dissembling. However, we immediately understand “poetizing ” rather customarily as the activity of those who are called “the poets.” Poetizing, understood strictly as the art of poetry [Dichtung], is “poetry” [»Poesie«]. The word is formed from the Greek verb ποιεῖν, which means: to produce, to bring-forth. Instead of “thinking and poetizing,” we could also say: “philosophy and poetry.” The fact that, in the ancient names for thinking and poetizing, in the words for philosophy and poetry, two fundamental words of early, incipient Western being resound, namely σοφία and ποιεῖν (cf. Heraclitus, 1. [The following is translated from GA 50, pp. 136–45.—Trans.] 41 Diels-Kranz B 112), has its own reason that is largely still concealed from us.§1. The Comparing of Thinking and Poetizing. Genuine Comparing If we take both of the word-constellations, thinking and poetizing , philosophy and poetry, as they are here presumably meant, precisely as a title for contemplation, then it immediately becomes clear that the task is to compare thinking and poetizing with one another. We believe we know what comparing is. In comparing [Vergleichen ], the two “things” to be compared are somehow already equated [gleichgestellt] with one another insofar as they are selected and presented as what is to be compared. Prior to this, there is already something the same [Gleiches] that is perceived about the two things, although it is mostly undetermined and evanescent. But by comparing it, it is almost as if the same were only used as a background to lift out what is different. Comparing is a method [Verfahren] that imposes itself everywhere upon human “thinking,” most likely because it is close to thinking. Yet we still have barely thought about the reasons for which this proximity arises, from which then emerges the strange precedence, prevalence, and popularity of the comparative method. Anything can be compared with anything, if comparing only depends on ascertaining something same and something different. The possibility of comparing in the formal sense, regardless of the “content,” is limitless. We will see this easily if we just briefly consider one inappropriate possibility of comparison . Someone could, for example, compare bike-riding and poetizing. What is the same in them consists in the fact that they are both human activities. The difference appears insofar as bike-riding is a bodily activity that uses a machine, whereas poetizing is a mental [geistig] activity. To be sure, we occasionally hear that modern poets supposedly poetize directly on a typewriter; in this regard there would also be something the same between bike-riding and poetizing, but they would still remain different insofar as the bicycle and the typewriter are 42 Thinking and Poetizing [136–137] different machines. Although there could still be a lot to discover about what is the same and different in bike-riding and poetizing, we are averse to this comparison. Why? Because bike-riding and poetizing lie too far apart from each other. Comparing them is decisively unfruitful, even if it were to be carried out in much further detail. Even if someone were still to accept this unfruitfulness, there remains in this comparison—which is somehow always already an equation—a devaluation of poetizing, even if we recognize bike-riding as a good activity. Precisely because the possibility of comparing is limitless, there always lies in the approach to the comparison a decision about what is the same—a decision that is deliberate and aware or unknowing and unaware. The things compared are set into this same from which they are viewed. For this reason, genuine comparing is always more than just comparing. After all, comparing is not supposed to result only in the determination of what is the same and different; rather, with real comparison, we aspire to see what is different through the same and through the difference of the same to always see...