The relationship of poetry and metaphsics in Martin Heidegger and İsmet Özel

Heidegger assigns a founding function to poetry in his philosophy. According to him, poetry has an ontological function as the establishment of truth. Heidegger, who bases his entire philosophy on the ontological structure of man, criticizes traditional Western thought and argues that this type of philosophizing is in a dead end that results in the forgetting of existence. Claiming that the relationship between man and existence is a tragic process, Heidegger, based on Hölderlin's elegies, states that the way of existence of man in the world is poetic and that this way of existence can only be expressed through poetry. According to him, poetry is the way of revealing what is hidden in nature. Poetry is the completion of what is established in language. Thus, poetry becomes the only way of expressing the coming of being into appearance. Man builds a world on earth through poetry. Özel realizes his discourses and poems through people. The main motif in his poems and writings is to reveal the relationship between man and nature. Özel, who constructs his poems on the tragic nature of human existence, thinks that the way to overcome this tragedy is hidden in the journey of man to the Creator. Claiming that man has built a homeland that no one can take from him in poetry, Özel expresses poetry as a way of expressing the journey of man and the world he has established. Thus, he argues that poetry is a founding element in human existence. Poetry is the only way that establishes and shapes human's world of meaning. Both Heidegger and Özel have serious similarities in that human existence is tragic and the way this tragic is expressed is poetry. In this sense, this thesis fills an important gap in the literature in terms of both filling the relationship between poetry and metaphysics and revealing the similarities when Heidegger and Özel's meaning ascribed to human existence and poetry is taken into account. Keywords: Martin Heidegger, İsmet Özel, Poetry-Metaphysics, The Tragic of Existence, Poetical Dwelling.