• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• Nouveautés
• A Paraître
• Meilleures ventes
• On en parle
• Signatures & Salons
• Recherche
• Nos collections
• Nos Auteurs
• Extraits & Bonnes feuilles
• Les Nouvelles de Stock
• Historique
• Qui sommes-nous ?
• Prix littéraires
• Contacts
• Téléchargements
• Libraires
• Presse
• Foreign rights
• Envoi manuscrit

What differentiates a philosophical thought from a poetic one? How do you distinguish between these two forms of writing and ways of life? These questions would not be asked if a number of philosophers did not give us the sometimes welcome, sometimes perilous impression that they were collectively addressing them. For example Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra; Descartes dreaming about his own dreams; Heidegger commenting on Hölderlin or Trakl; or Plato himself resorting to myths to explain his Republic…

The Poetic Insanity of Philosophers evokes the moments when images, sounds and rhythms contribute to the logic of argumentation. Moments when philosophical discourse strives, by reduction, to get to the bottom of the disturbing strangeness of poetry.

Each chapter is based on the work of one philosopher: Plato, Vico, Descartes, Kant, Leopardi… A significant amount of room is given to cotemporary philosophies: those of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Rancière, Alain Baiou, Michel Deguy and Jacques Derrida. The book concludes with a description (an imaginary one for the simple reasons that the event had no witnesses) of the famous meeting between the poet Paul Celan and the philosopher Martin Heidegger in a chalet in Todtnauberg in 1967. “Terrible things” are said there, things - we imagine - that touch on the future of our times. The status of what we call “reason” is at stake, as are its constitution and its uses. And its madness.


Christian Doumet is a professor of French literature at Paris-VIII university, and programming director at the International College of Philosophy. He has written books of poetry, essays on music and poetry, including Faut-il comprendre la poésie? (Klincksieck, 2004), a novel, La méthode Flaming (Fayard, 2001) and non-fictional prose, including Le Japon vu de dos (Fata Morgana, 2007) and Feu à volonté (Fata Morgana, 2008). Trois Huttes will be published by Fata Morgana in September 2010.