A Hermeneutics of Poetic Education: The Play of the In-Between

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A Hermeneutics of Poetic Education: The Play of the In-Between explores the ways in which both play and poetry orient us toward what surpasses us. Catherine Homan develops an original account of poetic education that builds on Friedrich Hlderlins idea of poetry as a teacher of humanity. Whereas aesthetic education emphasizes judgments of taste and rational autonomy, poetic education foregrounds self-formation and openness to the other. Critically engaging the works of Eugen Fink, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Paul Celan, this book argues that poetry and play call for a particular stance in the world and with others. Open toward the infinite while simultaneously reaching toward its own finitude, the poetic work addresses us and invites our response. Poetry reveals the human condition as in-between and dialogical, even at the limits of language. Although many philosophers devalue play as frivolous, Homan takes play seriously. Play--spontaneous and creative--resists mastery and instead requires an active attunement to the to-and-fro movement of the world, of others, and ourselves. A Hermeneutics of Poetic Education demonstrates that poetic education, as learning to listen, provides vital resources for responding to alterity in meaningful ways that resist totalization.

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"Catherine Homan makes a compelling case for poetic education beginning with Hlderlins appeal to the creative arts in the 19th Century. Weaving imaginatively different play traditions from the hermeneutic encounter with Gadamer and Fink to the social justice concerns of Gloria Anzalda, Mariana Ortega, and bell hooks, Hohman brings an original perspective to philosophy of education, arguing for language to be attuned to dialogical interplay and affectively rooted in the world. With her focus on an ethics of vulnerability, drawing on Paul Celans poetry, her book serves as an important corrective to play narratives in the hermeneutic tradition that merely tarry with the aesthetic."--Mechthild Nagel, SUNY Cortland -- Mechthild Nagel, SUNY Cortland

Author Bio

Catherine Homan is assistant professor of philosophy at Mount Mary University in Milwaukee.