Poetic Reason: Identity in the Midst of Mysticism and Philosophy

Early 20th-century irrationalist and vitalist philosophy finds a liminal proposal in María Zambrano, who argues for an archaizing renewal of a philosophy saturated with formulas and lacking experiential content. She reads Plato to show that the birth of philosophy is methodologically congruent with mystical experience: both are models of soul-liberation in search of truth as transcendent reality, both move from the multiplicity of being to the unity of the permanent, and both are sources of knowledge for the common person approaching the divine through decision and will. Her texts recover lost spirituality and access the sacred through poetic reason.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The irrationalist and vitalist options in the philosophy of the early twentieth century find in María Zambrano a liminal proposal. The author proposes a double movement: archaizing in order to renew the model of a philosophy saturated with formulas and without experiential content. To do so, she reads Plato, the father of Greek rationalism, through her acute hermeneutics to demonstrate that the birth of philosophy is methodologically congruent with mystical experience. Both philosophy and mysticism are models of liberation of the soul in search of truth, understood as transcendent reality. Both start from the multiplicity of being to coincide in the unity of the permanent. Both are also sources of knowledge for the common man who can approach the divine by means of his decision and will. Thus, in her main texts we find the arguments to recover the lost spirituality and to move into the experience of the sacred through the articulation of poetic reason.