The Existential And Its Exits

A. C. Dobrez

Descartes and Heidegger and, if it comes to that, a great many other philosophers, have put forward the compelling case for a connection between the activities of poet and thinker, artist and philosopher. Descartes, whose significance in a discussion of more or less contemporary writing and philosophizing will be apparent as we proceed, senses the fundamental unity in seeming diversity of literary and philosophical creativity. Heidegger, whose work is central to the concerns of this book, is even more insistent: poet and thinker trace their diverse inspirations to a common source. Of course we are bound to acknowledge that the relation of supposedly distinct disciplines like literature and philosophy is problematical, though it may well be less so in the

present context, which is that of modern existential thought.