Philosophical Fragments as the Poetry of Thinking

Luke Fischer is an Honorary Associate in Philosophy at the University of Sydney, Australia. His books include The Poet as Phenomenologist: Rilke and the ‘New Poems’ (2015), three books of poetry––most recently A Gamble for my Daughter (2022)––and the co-edited volumes The Seasons: Philosophical, Literary, and Environmental Perspectives (2021) and Rilke’s ‘Sonnets to Orpheus’: Philosophical and Critical Perspectives (2019).

In the tradition of J. G. Hamann ("Poetry is the mother tongue of the human race"), Romantics such as Schlegel and Novalis (the fragment as the proper form of philosophy), and Nietzsche, Luke Fischer´s new monograph contains a meditation on the filigran relationships between fragment, poetry, and philosophy under modern conditions. The result is a beautiful book -- subtle, thought-provoking, inspiring, and rich with remarkable Geistesblitzen.

• Preface Acknowledgements Part I: Poetological Fragments 1. On Poetry and Language ...2. On Philosophy and Freedom ...3. On the Alchemical Transmutation of Philosophy and Poetry ...4. On Art, Music and Nature ...5. On Practical Aesthetics and Society ...Part II: The Fragment as Philosophic Poem: An Essay 6. Fragments of a Whole 7. ‘Language is Delphi’ 8. ‘In Ten Sentences . . . A Book’ 9. ‘A Flash of Eternity’ 10. 'Metaphoricity of Being’