The Incarnational Redress of Participation and Poetics: A Question of Theological Poetics in Weil, Murdoch, and Heaney

Poiēsis and participatory metaphysics exist in an irreconcilable tension between ascension to the Forms and descension to representation. Yet, two well-known 20th century Platonists, Simone Weil and Irish Murdoch, identify this tension as a generative site of poetics. Taking a cue from these thinkers and the work of Kevin Hart, and Jean-Luc Marion, I attempt to show that the tension between poiēsis and participation is a guise of the problem of onto-theology: can one participate in metaphysical theism without thereby rendering God an idol? Transcribing the poiēsis/participation tension into a theological register will enable us to better understand Weil and Murdoch’s reappraisal of Plato, and will suggest that the poiēsis/participation tension can only be navigated via an appeal to a transcendent divinity, which wills to render itself accessible through sacramental signs. To test this hypothesis, I turn to the poetics of Seamus Heaney.