Poetic Knowledge

Poetic Knowledge: The Recovery of Education by James S. Taylor

JAMES TAYLOR describes his work as nothing new or revolutionary, but rather an effort of “philosophical archeology,” an “attempt to resuscitate a nearly forgotten mode of knowledge.” This “poetic knowledge” (so-called by St. Thomas Aquinas) has little to do with our modern connotations of either word. Rather, it is a mode of being which hearkens back to classical and medieval times, a “spontaneous act of the external and internal senses with the intellect, integrated and whole, rather than an act associated with the powers of analytic reasoning.” A knowledge from the inside out, rather than a mere knowing about. From this sort of organic understanding, explains Taylor, the objects and art of a culture naturally emerge – a celebration of the ordinary as wonderful. After tracing the history of poetic knowledge (quite frankly, so that the reader can begin his own education on the matter) through Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Benedict and the beginning of its demise with Descartes, Taylor documents modern voices for this type of education including the Maslacq school begun by André Charlier in France (mid-1940s) as well as a two-year Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas (mid-1970s). His study is a fascinating look at what has been, and what might be again, retrieved by reintegrating intellectual understanding with natural craft and trade. As André Charlier once commented when asked about his school, “It is a thing of which I would be incapable to explain, because I don’t know what I made there... We were a handful of friends – students and professors – who were open to one another and to the taste of the truth.”