María Zambrano: Poetic Reason vs. Vital Reason
María Zambrano: Thought and Poetry
The text, “Thought and Poetry,” is a fragment, as already indicated above, from her work, “Philosophy and Poetry.” In this paper, we highlight the following thematic clusters around which we believe that Zambrano’s thought revolves:
Regarding Ortega y Gasset
Although María Zambrano agrees with Ortega on the awareness of the crisis of European thought (the crisis of reason), she disagrees on the solution to overcome rationalism, which is incapable of capturing life in all its manifestations. Thus, she contrasts:
- Vital Reason and Poetic Reason: Ortega’s vital, historical reason, in which human life is circumstantial and historical, is contrasted by María Zambrano with poetic reason. She believes that the most profound and enigmatic aspects of human beings are neither circumstantial nor historical.
- Concept of Being: On the other hand, for Ortega, being was not a reality but an invention with which man intended to take over from reality as such. Reality is prior to being and prior to any concept that refers to it. The concept of “being” itself emerged, Ortega said, when the Greeks ceased to believe in gods. Zambrano, however, returns to the notion of being, emphasizing its essential and hidden character. Being is a germinal center, but it has to be projected onto action: to exist.
Rejection of Poetry in Plato
Notwithstanding that the text belongs to the chapter in which the referent is Plato, who, with his condemnation of poetry in the tenth and third books of the Republic, led to its rejection in Western culture. Plato considered poetry a lie and poets bad teachers in the transmission of values. Platonic philosophers proposed that these values ought to govern the city (polis).
Nietzsche’s Influence
For María Zambrano, the birth of philosophy had led to the discovery of consciousness, and with it, the loneliness of the individual. The god that was killed was the god of Nietzsche’s philosophy, one created by reason.
Nietzsche decided, like Zambrano, to return to the origin, to delve into human nature in search of the conditions of the divine. With Nietzsche, the tragic freedom was forged by Zambrano and her recovery of the divine, of all that, defined by philosophy, had been concealed. Thus, Nietzsche destroyed the limits that man had set for himself. Man regained all his dimensions, and of course, the “inferred” hells of the soul, his passions, and in hell: darkness, nothingness, the opposite of being, and distress. Nothingness then rose from the hells of the body and entered for the first time to occupy the places where there was an awareness of being.
The Individual and Society
Her mind is on the border of the problems of her time: in political philosophy, in the renewal of spirituality in art, in the emancipation of women, and in the new alliance of intellectuals with the people. The person is a form with which we cope with life, relationships, and dealings with others, with divine and human things. We are more of a person when we can think for ourselves, have consciousness, and turn our thoughts to what surrounds us. If these conditions are accepted by the community, then we are in a truly democratic society. The individual, for our author, represents behavior that opposes society, an antagonism to any form of interaction and development of the potential awarded to the person.