Philosophy and Poetry

Introduction

Zambrano wrote “Philosophy and Poetry” at the beginning of her exile; it appeared in 1939 in Morelia, Mexico, where she was teaching. The book starts from Plato’s expulsion of the poets from the ideal city and describes the history of a separation: philosophy, which seeks the whole through method and wants to possess truth, and poetry, which remains with what is given, with the particular and with the person, and receives rather than conquers. Chapters on thought, ethics, mysticism and metaphysics show what each side has lost through the split. Zambrano does not simply take the side of poetry; she looks for a reconciliation that she would later call “poetic reason”. The book is the first full statement of her thought and is still read as an introduction to it.

Connections

Criticizes

• Republicc. 375 BCE · Plato

More works by María Zambrano

• 1955Man and the Divine