Abstract: "We speak of understanding a sentence in the sense in which it can be replaced by another which says the same; but also in the sense in which it cannot be replaced by any other. (Any more than one musical theme can be replaced by another.)" Relying on this remark in §531 of the Philosophical Investigations my presentation will deal with the difference and interrelation between "poetic" (in a wide sense) and "prosaic" (more or less Fregean) thoughts. This will lead to the question of whether the traditional theoretical hierarchies – prose (and its analysis) as prior to (the analysis of) poetic language, or the other way around – are sound.

Martin R. Seel is Professor of Philosophy at the Goethe University, Frankfurt, and is Harris Distinguished Visiting Professor this summer. He is the author of fourteen books of philosophy and aesthetics, including Aesthetics of Appearing (published in English translation by Stanford University Press in 2004) and, most recently, The Arts of Cinema (to be published in English on July 15, 2018, by Cornell University Press). At Dartmouth this Summer Term (2018), he is be co-teaching Phil. 23.02, Philosophy and the Cinematic Arts, with Professor John Kulvicki.

The Sapientia Lecture Series is funded by the Mark J. Byrne 1985 Fund in Philosophy.