AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

In reconsidering the Socratic desire to ban poetry from public life, I set out by reading from some recent poetry. I cite Alain Badiou’s observation that Socrates objects not only that poetry imitates reality. More seriously, he fears a verisimilitude in poetic expression with which philosophy cannot compete. This objection is updated and used by Koethe, a contemporary poet philosopher, against the idea of poetry as a form of thought. Another classical objection to poetry is that it fails to deal in measurable qualities. Philosophy, however, is vulnerable to a similar charge. Philosophy and poetry may share a common cause at this point.

It is self-refuting to claim that all there is to be truly said is contained within fundamental physics. We may proceed in a more promising manner by developing an idea, à la Badiou, of the production of truth. An understanding of truth as something we produce does not exclude appraisals of truth and falsity. Rather, we need an approach to the tensions between poetry, prose and philosophy that permits us to speak of poetological, painterly, theatrical and musical ways of thought. Thus, in their autonomous forms, we regard them as ways of saying something about what they deal with.