Philosophy and Literature:  A Problematic Relationship

Since at least Plato’s Republic Book X, the relationship between philosophy and literature has been in question in the Western tradition.  At times, the two have been seen as radically different; at times, they have all but merged; at times, opinions in a given period have varied from author to author.  This session will attempt to examine various convergences between the two.  Participants are welcome to focus on philosophers looking at literature or literary writers examining philosophers or the whole philosophical tradition.  Participants should feel free to rely on secondary literature or rely on their own speculative insights to probe our memory of this relationship.  Our session welcomes reflection on cinema and its relationship to philosophical themes.

This session on philosophy and literature reflects PAMLA’s 2025 theme “Palimpsests: Memory and Oblivion.”  Our presentations represent an attempt to publicly explore the memory of this theme and rescue it from oblivion.

A few examples of areas to explore might be the following:

• Plato and poetry as articulated in Book 10 of the Republic
• Tragedy in general or one tragic dramatist in Aristotle
• Nietzsche’s use of Dionysus in his examination of Greek tragedy
• Heidegger and Hölderlin, Rilke, or Trakl as keys to the nature of art
• Proust, Bergson, and one aspect of time
• Time in Shakespeare’s Macbeth
• The contemporary use of animation and graphic literature to explore philosophical themes
• The exploration of aspects of human life in Dante and St. Thomas
• Trends concerning art and philosophy in specific historical periods, such as reflections on poetry in Romanticism or in a particular Romantic writer