Rilke and Philosophy &ndash\; Historical and Systematic Analyses
\nEdited by Moritz R. Pretzsch and Jan Kerkmann\, 2027
\nCall for Papers
\n&ldquo\;Rilke and philosophy&rdquo\; designates a relationship as multifaceted as it is fraught with tensions. Rainer Maria Rilke understood himself neither as a philosopher nor as the proponent of a systematic worldview. Nevertheless\, his work ranks among the most philosophically challenging achievements of literary modernism. His poetry develops a distinctive form of poetic thinking in which fundamental questions concerning being\, world\, language\, art\, time\, death\, love\, subjectivity\, and transcendence assume poetic form. Rilke&rsquo\;s writings do not articulate systematic doctrines\; rather\, they open up modes of experience and knowledge that resist purely conceptual comprehension and\, precisely for this reason\, pose a distinctive challenge to philosophical reflection. Their philosophical productivity lies not least in raising the question of whether poetry can yield knowledge where conceptual thought reaches its limits.
\nRilke&rsquo\;s work occupies the intersection of philosophy\, religion\, and art. It engages intensively with philosophical and theological traditions without aligning itself with any particular school or intellectual movement. His poetry develops a distinctive mode of disclosing the world in which perception\, language\, form\, and existence are inseparably intertwined. What is at stake is not merely the poetic treatment of philosophical motifs\, but a genuine movement of thought enacted by poetry itself. Rilke&rsquo\;s writings ask how the world becomes visible\, sayable\, and experienceable\; they explore how reality is transformed through the medium of language and how\, through poetic speech\, human beings may enter into a new relationship with things\, with themselves\, and with being.
\nParticularly characteristic in this regard is Rilke&rsquo\;s thinking of form. For him\, form is not merely aesthetic configuration but a way of ordering\, concentrating\, and rendering reality newly experienceable. In this sense\, Rilke&rsquo\;s poetry is closely connected with a &ldquo\;new seeing&rdquo\; that restores to things their independence while simultaneously transforming the human relationship to the world. Poetic language becomes an &ldquo\;Ortschaft der Worte&rdquo\; (&ldquo\;place of words&rdquo\;)\, in which being\, perception\, and expression permeate one another. Rilke&rsquo\;s poetry is therefore neither merely an expression of subjective inwardness nor decorative verbal art. It is a form of work upon the visibility of the world and\, at the same time\, upon one&rsquo\;s own existence.
\nRilke&rsquo\;s work emerged during a period of profound intellectual upheaval. Amid the erosion of metaphysical certainties\, the challenges posed by scientific and technological modernity\, a powerful belief in progress\, and the crisis of traditional religious frameworks of meaning\, he sought new possibilities for understanding both world and self. In doing so\, he engaged with philosophical and religious forms of thought without ever systematically adopting them. His engagement with Arthur Schopenhauer\, Sø\;ren Kierkegaard\, and Friedrich Nietzsche belongs to his intellectual horizon no less than his interest in Christian mysticism\, particularly Meister Eckhart\, as well as biblical and patristic traditions. His journeys to Russia brought him into contact with Orthodox spirituality and Russian religious philosophy\, while his encounters with Lou Andreas-Salomé\;\, Auguste Rodin\, and Paul Cé\;zanne had a lasting impact on his understanding of existence\, form\, work\, perception\, and artistic knowledge.
\nLou Andreas-Salomé\; is of particular importance in this context. Rilke&rsquo\;s relationship with her brings into focus questions concerning life and work\, help and self-help\, poetry and self-transformation. From this perspective\, Rilke&rsquo\;s writing may also be understood as a form of existential work in which thinking and writing acquire therapeutic\, orienting\, and transformative force. Poetry becomes a medium through which the past may be brought to life anew and through which experience\, memory\, and suffering may assume a new form of life. Art thus appears not as an escape from reality but as an arduous form of engagement with it.
\nRodin and Cé\;zanne likewise became decisive figures for Rilke&rsquo\;s poetic thinking. From Rodin\, Rilke learned the discipline of work\, the patience of form\, and an intense concentration on the thing. Cé\;zanne&rsquo\;s art\, in turn\, opened up a new mode of seeing in which things no longer appear merely as objects of subjective perception but emerge in their own presence\, density\, and silence. The silence surrounding things becomes\, in Rilke\, a philosophically significant realm of experience: it points towards a dimension of the world that cannot be immediately appropriated conceptually but becomes accessible only through attentive perception and poetic concentration.
\nAgainst this background\, philosophy in Rilke appears less as an academic discipline than as part of a comprehensive intellectual and existential search for an adequate way of seeing\, thinking\, and speaking. His poetry moves between a sense of belonging and existential groundlessness\, between connectedness to the world and solitude\, between body and spirit\, finitude and transcendence. Again and again\, it leads into states of suspension and lingering in which familiar certainties dissolve and new possibilities of relating to the world become visible. These states of suspension are among the philosophically most productive moments of Rilke&rsquo\;s work.
\nRilke&rsquo\;s points of contact with Eastern traditions of thought likewise deserve attention. Although there is no evidence of a systematic reception of either Buddhism or Daoism\, scholars have repeatedly identified motifs in his work that resonate with notions of serenity\, transformation\, emptiness\, non-availability\, and a deeper unity of all living things. Such intercultural perspectives open up new possibilities for reading Rilke&rsquo\;s poetry within the horizon of comparative philosophy while also bringing it into dialogue with contemporary debates concerning world-relation\, self-relation\, and transcendence.
\nThe philosophical key concepts of Rilke&rsquo\;s work likewise merit particular attention. Concepts such as thing\, transformation\, Weltinnenraum (&ldquo\;world inner space&rdquo\;)\, angel\, death\, love\, openness\, and song can be understood neither exclusively in poetological nor exclusively in metaphysical terms. Rather\, they form nodal points of a mode of thinking that interweaves ontological\, anthropological\, epistemological\, ethical\, and religious-philosophical dimensions. The New Poems\, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge\, the Duino Elegies\, and the Sonnets to Orpheus thus belong among those works of European modernism in which philosophical questions are not merely taken up but transformed and developed further in poetic form.
\nOf particular philosophical significance is Rilke&rsquo\;s understanding of seeing. His poetry aims at a new mode of perception in which things no longer remain mere objects of human disposal but are allowed to appear in their own presence. Poetic seeing opens up a relation to the world that places perception and knowledge\, proximity and distance\, openness and form in a productive tension. It is precisely here that the distinctive contemporary relevance of his work becomes apparent. Rilke&rsquo\;s poetry reminds us that knowledge does not consist solely in conceptual apprehension\, but also in a patient\, attentive\, and transformative perception of reality.
\nEqually fundamental is Rilke&rsquo\;s understanding of being. His work revolves around the question of how human existence can succeed at all in the face of finitude\, transience\, and historical uncertainty. Recurring motifs of solitude\, existential groundlessness\, and the search for belonging point not merely to biographical experiences but to fundamental structures of human existence. Again and again\, Rilke&rsquo\;s poetry leads into states of suspension in which accustomed certainties are suspended and new possibilities of understanding self and world become visible. This movement of a &ldquo\;turn towards one&rsquo\;s own&rdquo\; (Wendung ins Eigene) does not signify a withdrawal from the world but rather the search for a deepened form of being-in-the-world.
\nClosely connected with this is a remarkable reflection on the relationship between life and work. For Rilke\, poetry appears not merely as aesthetic production but as a form of life\, a spiritual exercise\, and a continuous labour upon one&rsquo\;s own existence. In this sense\, art possesses an orienting and\, not infrequently\, therapeutic function. It opens possibilities for self-formation\, self-understanding\, and existential transformation without ever being reducible to an aesthetics of mere self-expression. The frequently noted unity of living and working thus provides a central key to understanding Rilke&rsquo\;s poetic thinking.
\nNot least\, Rilke&rsquo\;s work revolves around the relationship between body and spirit. His poetry moves beyond traditional dualisms by understanding embodiment\, perception\, and spirituality as mutually interdependent dimensions of human existence. Here in particular lies its proximity both to phenomenology and to more recent debates in philosophical anthropology. At the same time\, the famous thought expressed in the Sonnets to Orpheus that &ldquo\;Gesang ist Dasein&rdquo\; (&ldquo\;song is existence&rdquo\;) acquires a philosophical significance extending far beyond literature. Poetry appears not as an ornamental addition to life but as a way of bringing forth reality\, disclosing a world\, and enacting human existence.
\nIt is precisely here that we can see why Rilke&rsquo\;s work continues to exert such extraordinary philosophical fascination. His poems open up realms of experience in which language does not merely describe reality but allows it to become visible in a new way. Again and again\, they lead us to the point at which conceptual thought encounters its limits and poetic language opens up a distinctive form of knowledge. The linguistic rigour\, formal perfection\, and existential truthfulness so often associated with Rilke&rsquo\;s poetry therefore cannot be understood in exclusively literary terms. Rather\, they account for its status as a philosophical event. Rilke&rsquo\;s work challenges us to reconsider fundamentally the relationship between poetry and thought\, language and being\, art and truth.
\nNo less significant is Rilke&rsquo\;s impact on twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy. The philosophical significance of his work was recognised early on and was emphasised in its religious-philosophical and existential dimensions particularly by Romano Guardini. Few German-language poets of modernity have engaged philosophy as persistently as Rilke. Martin Heidegger repeatedly drew upon his poetry in his reflections on language\, being\, dwelling\, and the essence of poetry\; Hans-Georg Gadamer understood it as a paradigmatic site of the interrelation of poetry\, experience\, and understanding. Emmanuel Levinas\, Maurice Blanchot\, Jacques Derrida\, Michel Henry\, Jean-Luc Marion\, and Giorgio Agamben have likewise engaged productively with Rilke&rsquo\;s work in connection with questions of alterity\, phenomenology\, the invisible\, the gift\, language\, and finitude. In hermeneutics\, existential philosophy\, philosophical anthropology\, philosophy of religion\, aesthetics\, and philosophy of culture\, Rilke&rsquo\;s poetry has likewise lost none of its philosophical force.
\nIt is precisely here that its continuing relevance lies. In the context of contemporary debates concerning the possibilities and limits of linguistic representation\, the crisis of traditional frameworks of meaning\, the relationship between human beings and the world\, the role of aesthetic experience\, and the significance of poetic knowledge\, Rilke&rsquo\;s work opens up an exceptionally productive space for philosophical reflection. His writings remind us that the world is disclosed not through concepts alone but also through perception\, intuition\, imagination\, and poetic language. They challenge us to rethink the relationship between philosophy and literature\, thinking and poetry\, rationality and aesthetic experience. For this very reason\, Rilke&rsquo\;s work has the potential to make a significant contribution to contemporary debates in ontology\, philosophy of language\, anthropology\, philosophy of religion\, and aesthetics.
\nAgainst this background\, the proposed edited volume seeks to reassess Rilke&rsquo\;s relationship to philosophy from both historical and systematic perspectives. On the one hand\, contributions may investigate the philosophical presuppositions\, contexts\, and interlocutors of his work. These may include\, among others\, Schopenhauer\, Kierkegaard\, Nietzsche\, Meister Eckhart\, Christian mysticism\, Russian religious philosophy\, Rodin\, Cé\;zanne\, Lou Andreas-Salomé\;\, philosophy of life (Lebensphilosophie)\, and phenomenology. On the other hand\, the volume seeks to examine Rilke&rsquo\;s philosophical reception and influence up to the present day. Possible points of reference include Heidegger\, Guardini\, Gadamer\, Levinas\, Blanchot\, Derrida\, Michel Henry\, Jean-Luc Marion\, Giorgio Agamben\, as well as more recent approaches in hermeneutics\, phenomenology\, philosophy of religion\, philosophy of language\, philosophical anthropology\, and philosophy of culture.
\nThe volume expressly understands Rilke&rsquo\;s poetry not merely as an object of philosophical interpretation but as a distinctive site of philosophical world-disclosure in its own right. Its guiding question concerns the contribution that poetic thinking can make to philosophy&rsquo\;s understanding of itself. In this sense\, the volume seeks not to treat literature and philosophy as separate discourses\, but as mutually enriching modes of human experience\, knowledge\, and engagement with the world.
\nContributions are invited on topics including\, but not limited to:
\nContributions addressing other aspects of the relationship between Rilke&rsquo\;s poetry and philosophical thought are\, of course\, equally welcome.
\nAbstracts (in English) outlining historically or systematically oriented contributions (max. 500 words) should be submitted by 31 December 2026 to:
\njan.kerkmann@philosophie.uni-freiburg.de
\n\nDecisions on acceptance are expected to be communicated by 1 February 2027.
\nCompleted contributions (max. 60\,000 characters including spaces\, Times New Roman\, 1.5 line spacing) should be submitted by 1 July 2027.
\nThe edited volume will be published in 2027 by a renowned international academic publisher.
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