Philosophical Fragments as the Poetry of Thinking

Innovatively combining philosophical inquiry and aphoristic writing, this study presents a bold new interpretation of philosophical poetics. Exploring fragments, both thematically and formally, Luke Fischer situates the form as uniquely positioned between philosophy and poetry.
Like poetry, fragments condense insights into few words, employ striking metaphors that draw intuitive connections, and make space for creative interpretation. Contrasting with the logical linearity of much philosophy, fragments disclose rather than prove, intimate more than argue, suggest a whole without elaborating a system, and emphasize the intuitive act of thinking. Fischer readjusts our understanding of philosophical ideas as they originate in moments of illumination, and reveals the fragment as philosophy in process. In a collection of original fragments and an exploratory essay, Fischer sheds light on the relation between poetry and philosophy, aesthetics and society, art and the environment, and discusses seminal practitioners of the fragmentary form, including Novalis, F. Schlegel, Nietzsche and Heraclitus. Philosophical Fragments as the Poetry of Thinkingmakes an engaging, nonlinear case for the possibility and significance of a poetic transmutation of philosophy.

Luke Fischer is a philosopher and poet. His various books include Philosophical Fragments as the Poetry of Thinking: Romanticism and the Living Present(2024), The Poet as Phenomenologist: Rilke and the 'New Poems'(2015), three books of poetry--most recently A Gamble for my Daughter(2022)--and the co-edited volumes The Seasons: Philosophical, Literary, and Environmental Perspectives (2021) and Rilke's 'Sonnets to Orpheus': Philosophical and Critical Perspectives(2019). He holds a PhD from the University of Sydney where he is also an honorary associate in philosophy. For more information, visit: www.lukefischer.net

Preface Acknowledgements Part I: Poetological Fragments 1. On Poetry and Language ... 2. On Philosophy and Freedom ... 3. On the Alchemical Transmutation of Philosophy and Poetry ... 4. On Art, Music and Nature ... 5. On Practical Aesthetics and Society ... Part II: The Fragment as Philosophic Poem: An Essay 6. Fragments of a Whole 7. 'Language is Delphi' 8. 'In Ten Sentences . . . A Book' 9. 'A Flash of Eternity' 10. 'Metaphoricity of Being'