Is one of them superior to the other as a way of expressing the truth, or are they complementary?

In "poetry" I am including art, music, symbolism, story-telling, etc.

In "philosophy" I am including logic, math, linguistics etc.

Poetry is superior at reaching people, but the mind untrained by structured education is a useless thing.

Philosophy, as per your definition, holds far greater truth. Grasping truth is essentially bending your mind to appreciate complex symbolic logic; language and art lacks the precision to build up the layered structures required.

I believe artists would say logical dissection fails to capture the "spirit/wholeness" of life.
A butterfly is only a butterfly when it is flying. Capture it and dissect into pieces and it is no longer a butterfly.
Science can dissect a butterfly, but it can't create a butterfly.

In its attempt to understand life, the intellect actually negates life.

Even artists dissect things and put them back together, which is what the intellect does (the criticism you're giving is where it stays in the dissect phase).

For example, an artist doesn't merely draw what he sees, but needs to understand the properties of things just as scientists do - how a leaf is formed, the shape of a muscle, how shadows work, how perspective works, a thousand "dissected" details. It is a dissected and reassembled recreation.

Similarly, music is pure dissected intellect in its construction. A note refers to a precise vibration level for a precise time. No one picks up a violin and just makes music; it's an intellectual process for the most part; the feeling is the cherry on top.

Art makes us feel but does very little to make us think. Truth is partly found in feeling but it is mostly found in thinking, as can be seen by the dopey barbarity and magical thinking of uneducated tribes.

I guess I'd put it this way: feelings are the gatekeeper, but once through the gate, truth is in the house of intellect for the most part.

Mozart said: "Love! Love! Love! that is the soul of genius"

I believe he was referring to passion, as passion drives the energy of the intellect.

Dance.

Yes, dance is very deep imo in the sense there is no separation between the "dancer" and the "dance".

.. and body language in general.

Art and science or thinking are from the same realm, not all of course.

A thinker enters the realm of supersensibility and brings forth a presentation within a rationalistic order to his fellow man. through thinking and thoughts allied with our senses we obtain the scientific truths to which we adhere, but not all of course.

The artist is within the same realm but becomes a practical thinker and creates his artistic endeavor onto the earthly by projecting the very same thoughts and thinking process to which the scientist/thinker/philosopher gleans.

Examples are: Hegel is totally within the realm of thoughts thereby leaving the earth to which some would find fault .

Nietzsche was the intellectual thinker, par excellence, who fell into inanity for he could not bring this intellectuality into the real; a neurasthenic victim of a great intellect.

The great Greek statues are the projection of this higher realm onto the earthly; who can deny the beauty and truth contained within the Venus de Milo ? This is the world of practical thought.

An interesting item is that the ancient sculptor didn't use "models" but was able to create out of an inner feeling as per example your own particular feeling for the articulations of your shoulder or the flow of one's facial relief.

The color of a Rembrandt or Raphael stand in contradistinction to the measurement of color wavelengths; both approach the real but the angstrom has left the higher realm of suprasensibility and made color only earthly, only of the earth; Raphael not so.

One may study music with mathematics , but music is of this higher realm to which each of us can and do enter and is precursor to the mathematics . the octave, as we all know, can be gleaned as mathematical but the beauty therein is multifaceted and the projective of a supersensible harmony not of a ponderable earthly origin, the realm of artists, thinkers, poets and of course to be redundant, the harmony of the musician.

And, oh yes, dance can be so ......

A dance can be a huge conspiracy of truth which holds both poetry and philosophy.

"Truth" is just another word, used in many contexts, mostly prosaic. But you don't want prosaic, OP, you want deep and spiritual.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/13...iever-1323751/


PairTheBoard

Really? Why would spiritual go with deep when spiritual is more like light? Is poetry best equipped to portray life's light and darks?

More like light?

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/spiritual

No mention of truth or light there. Some say that the subject matter of poetry is poetry.

Oh it's goes lots of ways, why not?

I don't see the two as being separate in most cases.

Candy is Dandy but
Liquor is Quicker. - Ogden Nash

Poetry has some usefulness - like women - But don't take it too seriously.

What should you take too seriously?

And...

What does it look like to take poetry too seriously?

Forgetting that life is a stream of poetry may be like a serious condition.

Behold:

Leave me out of your habitual derision. Creep.

You attack me 20+ times with zero content, and now you get a tiny taste of your own medicine, you cry for mommy? Sad.

Go away and leave me alone.

Concern with being is light and dark, shallow and deep. It's inner thoughts, outer space; a puddle and oceans. A poem when it is.

Truth can be overrated. A tautology is true, but it doesn't tell you anything.