Rene Descartes got the head ahead of the whole.
The name Rene Descartes may not ring a bell with you. She is not a French fashion model. Rene isn’t even a she. Rene is a 17th century philosophical he. Your memory may not hold his name in its store of significant facts but your mind looks out at the world through Descartes glasses.
Rene was looking for certainty. Who can blame him, awash as he was (and as we are) in an uncertain world. He was desperate for the one absolute thing he could know. Or thought he could know. What he knew was that he was thinking. He was actively, purposefully cogitating. He was looking out of his brain through the windows in his head, aka eyes, and considering what he thought he saw. Maybe it wasn’t actually out there at all. Maybe he was dreaming. Maybe he was thinking up the ‘real’ world. He couldn’t be sure. What he could be sure of was that something inside the bone helmet of his head was thinking and he identified that something as proof of his existence. So Descartes dusted off his Latin dictionary and wrote down on a piece of paper three words, cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am.” At least he was convinced of that much. At least there was one certain thing.
Descartes was not wrong, he just wasn’t completely right. He taught us the value of doubt as a tool for discovering the verifiable. But, like every new proposal, Descartes’ cogito ergo sum had unintended consequences. The ghost of Descartes’ certainty has haunted Western thought for more than three hundred years. The quest for certainty and certainty’s unintended consequences continue to bedevil our understanding of what it means to be human. Descartes’ formula, “I think, therefore I am,” leads us to the conclusion that our most distinguishing human characteristic is our ability to think. That sounds quite plausible. How can that be anything other than true?
It is “the truth,” but not the ‘the whole truth.” Thinking as proof of being leaves out a whole multitude of sentient beings who do not think in the manner that we think. It also dismisses as inferior a host of human qualities such as emotions, instincts, moods, and those exquisite moments of ecstasy when joy ripples through the body drowns out the consciously cogitating mind. In effect, Descartes’ certainty turns us into ‘thinking machines,’ with the body as a life support system for our computational brain. It mistakes a granted significant part for the unified organic whole.
When we think about tightrope walkers we think of rope. In order for a tightrope walker to perform his or her feat a rope is required. But not just a rope, but also two end anchors to fasten the rope in place, and a pole to aid in balancing the walker along the way. Which one is most important? I would immediately identify the rope as the distinguishing feature of tightrope walking. But without the anchors and the pole the act of daring could not take place. The rope is part of an assemblage of items all necessary for tightrope walking.
The same is true for our rational mind. Claiming rationality as our distinguishing characteristic, while reasonable, is not all-encompassing and must not diminish the other aptitudes we have that make us human. When we mistake a part, even an incredibly brilliant part, for the whole, we reduce the multi-dimensional magnificence of being human.
Poetry is a form of language that holds in high regard the complexity of our humanness, thought, sensation, and emotion presented as a unified whole. In the words of the German Romantic poet Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (1772 – 1801) known as Novalis, “The more poetic, the more real.”
Poetic certainty is different from Descartes’ scientific certainty. Poetry captures the whole gestalt of experience, sensation, reason, and emotion offered as a single word-event. Even though analysis, taking things apart, is necessary for understanding, synthesis, putting things together, is necessary for experiencing the exquisite force of life.
Poetry allows us to touch and be touched by that force.