‘Show Don’t Tell’: What Creative Writing Has to Teach Philosophy

Poetry and philosophy have had a close but uneasy relationship in the western tradition. Both share an eschewal of the discovery of novel facts, but are somewhat opposed in that discovery is a central aim of poetry, but not at all the aim of philosophy. Through a close reading of W.H. Auden’s ‘In Memory of W.B. Yeats’ and a versification of part of G.E. Moore’s ‘A Defence of Common Sense’, I argue that what poetry shows corresponds, in a broadly symbolist sense, to Wittgenstein’s understanding of the miraculous nature of the world. In this regard, poetry can offer philosophy clarity, in the form of its tonal architecture, value, and ethics, and may also constitute a perspicuous representation. Poetry remains in a perpetual mode of potential, as well as being possessed of a vatic autonomy.