Hi Dave,
DMB said:
But poetry is poetry even when it's about mystical experience. It's
better than prose but it is still language. And the mystical reality is
outside of language so the phrase "mysticism as poetry" seems
dismissive and it seems to defy the MOQ's central distinction.
Matt:
Yeah, I don't see it that way. The definition of poetry being used
isn't limited to the lyric or epic, or even what we standardly shuffle
into the class called "poem." Rorty's sense of "poet" includes all
thinkers, from Homer to Plato, Plutarch to Nietzsche, both James
brothers, Wallace Stevens, Freud, Davidson, etc.
The central issue dividing us, it would seem, is what "the mystical
reality is outside of language" means. Because if it doesn't mean
"transcendence," as you've indicated, then I'm not sure what issue
is left that Rorty would've had a hard time with, an issue that
makes "mysticism as poetry" seem dismissive, rather than the
highest compliment Rorty could think to give something.
To me, the issue seems almost entirely verbal. You have, it would
seem, a low estimation of poetry (at least, in comparison). Rorty
used "poetry" as the genre-label for where secularists housed their
spiritual texts.
Matt
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