Rationality and Poetry

September 26, 2018 General Insights No Comments

People are more rational than other animals. More poetic too. Probably we differ more in the latter than in the former.

Rationality = taking into account as much as possible elements from reality and linking them together in the most logical way possible in order to generate new knowledge.

Poetry = reacting deeply to something, in a pattern-way, in order to let it flourish from there.

They seem to be two opposite worlds…

You may  guess that I’m about to say this isn’t necessarily the case.

Indeed.

To some extent they even need each other to be themselves:

  • A persistent rationality has the intention to see the total Poetry is a part of this. It’s even an inseparable part of everything related to human depth. There is poetry In each scrap of depth. This poetry can only be grasped from within. So, rationality needs poetry .
  • Poetry without rationality is like a balloon outside the earth’s atmosphere. It spatters into pieces. If it’s about a poetic approach on illness and healing, for example, chances are that – without rationality – things can readily turn out badly. An additional difficulty is that in such a case neither the poet nor the possible victims necessarily notice this.

The outcome of intensely thinking further about this, may be:

  • The ultimate goal of rationality is truth.
  • The ultimate goal of poetry is truth.

That sounds peculiar? In both domains you see people making an effort to ‘grasp’ something as good as possible. They want to see something as accurately as possible and they want to communicate it one way or another. In other words, they want to capture a piece of reality as truthfully as possible. They want … truth.

This reality does not need to be something Platonic that exists beyond man.

People aim for it without that what is aimed for, needs to be ‘ultimate’, nor reachable. You may say that the truth which is strived for is far greater than any ultimate truth. It is a warm truth.

AURELIS pretends to be a search for ‘100% rationality and 100% poetry’ at the same time.

[see: “AURELIS USP: ‘100% Rationality, 100% Depth’“]

Not one beside the other but indeed both at the same time. As a result, it brings these worlds much closer together than anything else. The best way to achieve this, as I see it, is by again and again making a correct distinction between both and then again and again striving to bring them together again. A ‘re-ligare’. A re-synthesis.

The distinction is needed because otherwise they get in each other’s way. Rationality simply has its own methods and poetry too.

Always bringing them back together again is needed because of the above-described reason.

You can compare the whole process with forging a samurai sword

that is repeatedly heated and folded by the blacksmith until it gets its solid form. This way, all impurities are fading and the sword becomes very hard and razor-sharp.

Hopefully the ‘AURELIS sword’ will in a search for truth only be used for the better.

Leave a Reply

Related Posts

Searching for Harmony

Harmony thrives in the interplay of elements, creating unity without demanding uniformity. It’s not about rigid structures but about how “this flows with that” as a living essence woven into the fabric of existence. Whether in nature, human interaction, or the inner self, harmony invites us to explore the dynamic art of connection that emerges Read the full article…

The Importance of ‘Certainty’

With ‘certainty’ I mean something that you can see as a kind of open surrogate for the belief in a placebo. This is to say: the action of believing in it (so the power, without the lie of it). It is a ‘certainty’ that you can basically take up yourself and that makes many things Read the full article…

Growing Purpose in Young Soil

The Global Flourishing Study (2025), one of the largest of its kind, found that especially younger adults worldwide consistently report lower levels of happiness, purpose, and life satisfaction than older generations. This is not a cultural blip—it’s a global trend. Behind the numbers is something deeper: a longing, a disorientation, and a subtle but powerful Read the full article…

Translate »