Abstract : The contemporary economy has become detached from its ethical, existential, and communal foundations. This essay argues that the epistemology of the poetic reason, as developed by María Zambrano, offers a fundamental alternative to the dehumanizing nature of dominant economic rationality. Zambrano’s philosophy restores the connection between feeling, memory, dream, and logos, shedding light on the forgotten dimensions of human existence that have been suppressed by the rule of instrumental reason. We argue that poetic reason constitutes an epistemological framework capable of integrating the subjective, ethical, and spiritual aspects of human action into economic thought. Through this rupture with utilitarian logic, a relational economy can emerge, centred on reciprocity, symbolic value, and integral Life.

The dehumanization driven by the economy—or rather, by the individuals who actively participate in the dehumanization of the community and of themselves—finds a lifeline in poetic reason. This dehumanization stems from a condition of merely “awakening by existing,” wherein reason exiles feeling, memory, mystery, dream, sorrow, and joy. In Zambrano’s thinking, this eros has been burned away. As a result, the individual has uprooted and orphaned themselves. As a surrogate, one follows the miserable path of excessive, useless consumption, vulgar capital accumulation, and insatiable profit-seeking. These individuals no longer know how ashamed they should be and employ only economic language with false metaphors and symbols to justify their pathology. These irrational opinions replace ideas, allowing the violence and power of the economy to dominate, and spreading the disease of uprootedness throughout the community. Economic activity has taken over the function of poetic thought—a form of leprosy that excludes the path of integral Life. Humanity is a transcendent being that must continually recreate itself and must not allow itself to be dehumanized within an economic world.

María Zambrano (1904–1991) posits that in the human essence, in the soul, thinking and Being are one. Yet, through forgetfulness of Being—i.e., by reducing thinking to merely rational thought—we have become soulless, uprooted individuals. An awakening as “awakening by being born” implies an openness to the Broad Reason, that is, an equal seeing and contemplating with poetic reason (logos) as with rational reason.

What does Zambrano mean by poetic reason? It is the transformation of intuitive feeling—the given that is born before it is created—the fore-feeling that reveals itself in poetic reason, giving rise to Verstehen (understanding), which in turn must be elucidated by Erklären (explanation) through rational reason. The poetic is understood as poiesis (bringing-forth) and alētheia (unconcealment). Reason is not the ratio with its unconditional certainty and domination of reality but the Logos. The Logos, a form of speaking, a way of saying that gathers and assembles—in contrast to ratio—lets what it gathers and assembles rest in themselves and reorients them toward what is most appropriate.

Through egolessness or selflessness, one encounters the non-place, the empty space, the silence, the intimate and reverent relationship with reality that stimulates creativity—a luminous intelligibility in which poiesis unveils the essence of an existence in full receptivity, revealed through alētheia. This unveiling only becomes meaningful when the logos is the bearer of a listening, receptive mode of speech—speech that gathers. Only in this way can we reach the totality of the human being, comprehend and experience integral Life: res cogitans and Eros. Turning knowledge into wisdom. Answering existential questions. Embracing the plurality of life instead of the shameful plurality of capital, profit, and overconsumption.

Poetic, ethical reason restores the lost dimensions of human value, subjectivity, and the desecration of the world through a deeper form of thinking and speaking, thus lifting the forgetfulness of Being. Poetic reason is a method, an epistemology that, through sensitivity, metaphor, and symbols, reveals the deeper, “unspeakable” aspects of reality—including the ethical dimensions of economics. It is an attempt to reunite humanity and the world, beyond the fragmentation of ratio, in a renewed understanding of the meaning of existence.

It is within this Vita Nova that a relational economy can emerge, one that values reciprocity, contingency, emergence, and symbolic values. A Logos Vivens, with a living poetic reason, in which thinking becomes ethical, existential, and truthful.