Thought for the Day.

[Animavore]

I thought it would be interesting to have a thread where we could each post a thought for the day. Doesn't have to be everyday but, I think it should be agreed it should only be one in any day (the more prudent among you may wish to post one at 23:59 and another at 00:01 if you really must).
The thoughts can be about anything or in any style be it aphorism or essay, whatever. You could even do it spoken if the fancy took you. It could be relevant or irreverent. Anything goes basically.

So I'll begin with a thought that just struck me while listening to a series of lectures by Louis Markos on poetry From Plato to Post-Modernism.

I was listening to a lecture on Sir Philip Sidney's An Apology For Poetry.
Here Sidney lays out a defence of poetry, a refutation if you will, on Plato's idea in The Republic that the poets should be kicked out of the republic because their ideas are an imitation of an imitation. With the transcendental, or heavenly you being the real and perfect you and the temporal you, or whatever person or even object, being an imitation of this perfection. Plato argued that rulers should be philosophers ruling with pure logic.
Sidney's argument in a nutshell states that you need poetry to describe the perfect. That you cannot use logic to describe the divine. That Plato himself leaves his train of logic and switches to metaphor and poetry when he wants to speak of his perfect other-world (and he cites the allegory of the cave to back his claim).
He also talks of St Paul in The Acts [NT] speaking with doctors and sceptics in Greece, these guys are firing all these questions about the nature of God at him which St. Paul, apparently, does a good job of answering logically but, when St. Paul wants to talk about the divine or the nature of God, he too switches to poetry.
So Sidney argues that poetry comes before philosophy. That philosophy wouldn't exist without poetry because poetry is next to the divine and philosophy takes from that. Sidney thought we should have "Poet kings."

I think it is very telling that one has to switch from logic to poetry when speaking about the divine.

[FBM]

I thought it would be interesting to have a thread where we could each post a thought for the day...

I think it is very telling that one has to switch from logic to poetry when speaking about the divine.

Am I wrong in thinking that there are buttloads of philosophical books written about the divine that don't involve poetry?

If you're talking about producing books that appeal to the general public, then yes, rhetoric/poetry does sell much better. It's easier to read, and it tugs on one's favorite emotions, reassuring the faithful that everything is alright, that there's reason and order to the world of experience, and that the most powerful being in the universe loves them unconditionally.

My thought for the day:

Shit. Gimme minnit. I forgot... Ah!

"If things were supposed to be different, they would be."

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"That was then, this is now. Let the dead past bury its dead."

[FBM]

It's 10:45 p.m. here, so I guess I have to wait an hour fifteen before I can post another thought...