“Concepts of Mind in Poetry and Philosophy:

Apprehension and Idrāk Across Early Modern Eurasia”

Timothy Harrison, Associate Professor, English and Social Thought

Jane Mikkelson, Assistant Professor of the Humanities, Yale University

Respondent: Mark Payne

Chester D. Tripp Professor, Classics, Comparative Literature, Social Thought, and the College

The paper deals with the relationship between poetry and philosophy, routed through an original Afro-Eurasian history of the concept of apprehension, traced across multiple languages (Greek to Arabic to Latin to French, English, and other European languages; Greek to Arabic to Persian and Indian languages). There are two guiding questions. First, what is the relationship between poetry and philosophy? And second, how might we pose that first question well? Hint: posing the question well would mean drawing on more intellectual traditions than the ancient Greek and the (early) modern European; Aristotle and Hegel, yes, but also other inheritors of philosophy across the Afro-Eurasian landmass. The idea is to see how poets writing in different cultural milieux (Persian, English) dialectically grappled with shared (but differently inflected) concepts of mind.

Read Paper

November 14

“Buber, Rilke, Benjamin: Poetic Transformation and the Capacity for Responsiveness”

Alicia Badea, PhD Student, Germanic Studies

Respondent Florian Klinger

Associate Professor in Germanic Studies and the College