Abstract: The split between philosophy and poetry has long been accepted as natural in Western culture. Agamben maintains that this scission actually engendered serious problems. It is a manifestation of the schizophrenic character of Western culture: the subject cannot fully possess the object of knowledge and experience the wholeness of humanity, leading to alienation of the self and culture. In addressing the old enmity between philosophy and poetry, Agmaben proposes a kind of creative criticism, which joins together criticism and creation, to recover the unity of the fragmented word in Western culture. In Agamben's view, the development of an "interdisciplinary discipline" without a specific object, in which all the human sciences converge, is the cultural task of the coming generation.

Key words: Agamben, split between philosophy and poetry, schizophrenia, threshold, creative criticism