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The Ancient Quarrel and the Dream of Writing
Author(s) -
SMITH RICHARD
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of philosophy of education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.501
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-9752
pISSN - 0309-8249
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9752.12324
Subject(s) - opposition (politics) , witness , philosophy , epistemology , dream , binary opposition , poetry , literature , philosophy of education , law , psychology , linguistics , political science , politics , higher education , art , neuroscience
The main purpose of this article is to question and finally reject the tendency to see philosophy and literature (especially poetry) as essentially distinct forms of language, a tendency which sometimes extends to regarding them as mutually exclusive and to be understood as in some way in opposition to each other. The idea of that opposition is generally supposed to go back as far as Plato, at least, and much of what I write here will concern just how we are to read what we find on the matter in Plato's Republic, how we are to read Plato's dialogues in general and, even more broadly, how we are to read what comes to us under the title of philosophy. It is Plato, I suggest, who supplies us with a powerful way of understanding the instability of the literature/philosophy binary, and who, at the end of Republic, invites us to witness its collapse.