Abstract

This chapter offers an account of knowledge suitable for the poet, whose interest in knowledge is often very different from the philosopher’s. The grammar of the phrase ‘poet knowing’ is important, since the continuous present emphasizes that the poet tends to treat knowledge as a ‘tentative, unfinished journey, a foray into poetry’s difficult thickets of meaning’. The chapter reveals the different kinds of cognitive interest we can take in the affairs of life, and it compares philosophical and poetic works to highlight how the forms of writing and thinking distinctive of each open up or preclude ways of knowing. This chapter does not take a side in the ancient quarrel, but it does offer powerful reasons against thinking that the descendants of Socrates have a greater claim to the pursuit of knowledge than those of Sappho.