Western philosophy, from early in its history, has characterized itself in part by distinguishing how its statements and methods were different from those of the poets and, having made this distinction, what role the work of poetry was to have in philosophy. This book examines some of the philosophical writers who have participated in this effort. At the beginning of this story, Plato defined the relationship between poetry and philosophy as a quarrel, indeed, as an ancient quarrel. One theme in this book is that the so-called ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy is itself neither poetry nor philosophy. Rather, it is an image portraying the interaction of poetry and philosophy as important for the pursuit of insight into the truth of things human and divine, a truth less accessible both to poets devoid of philosophy and to philosophers devoid of poetry. The domain of the quarrel is one that longs for a certain fullness of thought that goes beyond the exigencies of inquiry confined to the boundaries of either poetry or philosophy. Whether reluctantly or not, the philosophers addressed here acknowledge the importance of poetry to philosophy by acknowledging the peculiarity and value of the poets' insights, by using the tools of the poets in their own work, or by struggling to put the poets in their proper place.

Plato fretted over the poets' claims to wisdom and, in particular, their claims to sometimes be speaking for the gods.

“Through a man puffed up with monstrous pride,” Augustine writes in his Confessions, “you brought under my eye some books of the Platonists, translated from Greek and Latin. There I read, not of course in these words, but with entirely the same sense and supported by numerous and varied reasons, ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.’” Saint Augustine says that he met Christ, the Logos, in the work of Plotinus and that of his disciple Porphyry. Much later he encountered head-on both the pagan philosophers and the poets in light of this encounter. Indeed, the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy is at the heart of the young Augustine's own life and is at the heart of the mature Augustine's encounter with all Greek and Roman literature and philosophy in The City of God, where the poets' need for the corrective response of philosophy is rooted in the active malevolence of the demonic. Given the impact of Augustine on subsequent thought and the impact of Plotinus on Augustine, it is worthwhile starting with a brief look at the work of Plotinus.

Addressing the accusation that poetry obstructed the view of truth required that philosophy intervene, yet the intervention has shown that poetry has contributed positively to the ways in which questions are posed in philosophy, especially metaphysics and ethics.

Writing about Thomas Aquinas, G. K. Chesterton says, “He very specially possessed the philosophy that inspires poetry, as he did so largely inspire Dante's poetry.” Aquinas was a trained poet. In Naples he studied the art, rules, and methods of rhythmic composition. He wrote Office of the Blessed Sacrament, which is counted among the finest pieces of medieval literature. Thomas thoroughly understood what the poets were doing, thought the role of speaking for God was important, and allowed in several places that the pagans had been used to speak for the Divine. He also thought revelation had advanced beyond the pagans, and for him the division of labor was clear. Words from God come through revelation, through the prophets who experience something beyond their own capacity, at times even through “rapture,” a concept very close to the theia mania of the poets in the Phaedrus but trustworthy because of reasons Aquinas gives us in his treatises on prophecy, rapture, and contemplation. It is the Christian thinker (philosopher/theologian) who can judge the pagans and listen for God's voice. In the case of the prophets of God, the philosopher is bound to listen to the whole as delivered by God and, as it were, make sense. Among the pagans, however, the philosopher can dismiss more inconvenient statements that complicate the effort to “make sense.”

Aquinas was not one to put great stock in flashes of insight. What Aquinas wanted was not flash, beauty, or surprise.