The Poetics of the Sensible

In the first English language translation of this classic late 20th-century text within French Catholic thought, Poetics of the Sensiblebrings together insights from Neoplatonism and phenomenology with a distinctive and innovative approach.

Taking a stance within the generative conception of human language represented by continental thinkers such as Humboldt and Herder and powerfully articulated today by Charles Taylor, Stanislas Bretonexpands the sense of the ＂poetic＂-the constructive meaning-bearing capacity that is a core characteristic of humanity-to include the body and its senses phenomenologically intertwined with the world. Defying Heidegger’s prohibition on the question of God alongside contemporary thinkers such as Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Louis Chrétien and Emmanuel Falque, he boldly writes of God, of the angel, of the icon, and of prayer in a refusal to bracket his religious faith. Against a Neoplatonic backdrop, Breton promotes the dense material dimensions of embodied signification as paradoxically harbouring meaning that is greater than that of conceptual abstraction alone.

Illuminating Breton’s poetic and allusive discourse, Poetics of the Sensibleshowcases his unique voice in French philosophy, phenomenology and the philosophy of religion and is essential reading for scholars and students alike.

Stanislas Breton was a French theologian and philosopher. He taught at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, the Catholic University of Paris and the Catholic University of Lyon, France.

Sarah Horton is pursuing research in philosophy at the Catholic University of Paris and the Australian Catholic University