num_pages: 223
description: From the distinguished polymath George Steiner comes a profound and illuminating vision of the inseparability of Western philosophy and its living language. With his hallmark forceful discernment George Steiner presents in The Poetry of Thought his magnum an examination of more than two millennia of Western culture staking out his claim for the essential oneness of great thought and great style. Sweeping yet precise moving from essential detail to bracing illustration Steiner spans the entire history of philosophy in the West as it entwines with literature finding that as Sartre stated in all philosophy there is a hidden literary prose.The poetic genius of abstract thought Steiner believes is lit is made audible. Argument even analytic has its drumbeat. It is made ode. What voices the closing movements of Hegels Phenomenology better than Edith Piafs non de non  a twofold negation which Hegel would have prized? This essay is an attempt to listen more closely.
language: English
title: The Poetry of Thought: From Hellenism to Celan
publisher: New Directions