María Zambrano: Poetic Reason and the Humanization of History
Structure of “Thought and Poetry”
“Thought and Poetry” by María Zambrano develops three main issues:
- The Union of Thought and Poetry: Zambrano discusses Plato’s expulsion of poetry from the philosophical field.
- Critique of Rationalism: She argues that the abstraction of rationalism leads to a loss of the multiplicity and diversity of the concrete.
- Poetic Reason: Zambrano presents her vision of poetic reason as a path that unites philosophy and poetry.
The Failure of Rationality
María Zambrano believed that rationality had failed. Reason, which aimed to understand all of reality and create a new human free from attachments, instead led to dictatorships and wars. This failure of rationality was, for Zambrano, a failure of humanity itself. Therefore, the new philosophical project should be the recovery of the human, a return to the soul to find truth.
Poetic Reason
Although not systematically presented in any single work, Zambrano’s concept of poetic reason is undoubtedly inspired by the “vital reason” of her mentor, Ortega y Gasset. Ortega sought to unite rationalism and vitalism, recognizing that humans cannot be considered independent of their circumstances and that life itself is the ultimate reality. Reason, therefore, must be grounded in life. All knowledge is part of life, and reason is part of living rightly. As humans live, they make sense of their existence.
Zambrano, however, sought to avoid purely rational discourse, focusing more on the personal. She observed that since the dawn of history, humanity has transitioned from a poetic attitude to a philosophical one. While poetry offers answers, philosophy poses questions. Questions arise from chaos, emptiness, and despair when previous answers no longer suffice.
Bridging Philosophy and Poetry
These considerations lead Zambrano to establish a poetic thought capable of overcoming the division between philosophy and poetry. Her work operates on two levels: philosophical reflection on the failure of rationalism (philosophical discourse) and poetic experience (mystical-poetic discourse). Philosophy, for Zambrano, is always a transformation and a desire for transparency. She believed that classical Greek thought originated from the separation of the sacred and logical thinking. This split forms the basis of contemporary culture, characterized by its blind faith in a reason detached from real life (rationalism).
Rationalism and History
Rationalism begins with the premise that reality must be transparent to reason, must be comprehensible. Like all forms of absolutism, rationalism seeks to kill history, to stop it, by abstracting time. Placed among final truths, humans cease to feel the passage of time and its steady destruction. They no longer experience time in opposition, in resistance, in perpetual struggle against time, against the nothingness that comes in its path (Heraclitus). If history is any construction or architecture, the dream of reason, of absolutism, and of monotheistic religions is to build over time. Consciousness, in this artificial timelessness of eternal truth, cannot awaken. Consciousness arises in tandem with the personal and grows with strength.
Humanizing History
Zambrano’s central concern was to “humanize history and even personal life, to make reason an appropriate tool for understanding reality, above all of that immediate reality that is man himself.” To humanize history is to embrace one’s own freedom through the awakening of personal consciousness, which must bear time and, even more, the different times of the individual.