In the first English language translation of this classic late 20th-century text within French Catholic thought, Poetics of the Sensible brings 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 Breton expands 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 Sensible showcases his unique voice in French philosophy, phenomenology and the philosophy of religion and is essential reading for scholars and students alike.

Translated by: Sarah Horton