Classical Imagination: Un-Necessary Mediator

Vol. XLV | 1 ARTICLES Classical Imagination: Un-Necessary Mediator Mark Jalalum Abstract The role of imagination in philosophy and thinking has been variously understood but also obscured by an ambiguity. This ambiguity arises from the fact that imagination, as an agency of human mind, is both employed and downplayed in philosophical inquiry. I argue that this ambiguous status of imagination can be apprehended in the works of Plato, Aristotle, Pico and Kant. I also suggest that their conceptions of imagination are shaped by its function as a “mediator” between the senses and reason. By examining the views of imagination in evidence in these thinkers, I aim to show that imagination has had a complex and 2 Classical Imagination: Un-Neccessary Mediator ambivalent role in the Western metaphysical tradition. However, I also claim that Kant’s radical rethinking of imagination as the transcendental faculty of synthesis opens up new possibilities for a more positive appreciation of imagination in philosophy, especially in the field of phenomenology. To achieve these goals, I will briefly revisit the classical accounts of imagination. In so doing, I reappraise its position in classical Western metaphysics and open up, albeit only preliminarily, a possibility for a renewed evaluation of its role in philosophy and thinking in light of the post-Kantian developments such as Husserlian phenomenology. Keywords: metaphysics, imagination, ambiguity, mediation Introduction In classical Western metaphysics, imagination has played a crucial but vague role since Plato, who influenced the dominant trend until Kant (2007) redefined the empirical and transcendental functions of Einbildungskraft (imagination) in the first of the Critique of Pure Reason (Critique henceforth). This paper will show that imagination acts as a mediator in the philosophical arguments of Plato, Aristotle, Pico and Kant. This mediational role of imagination bridges the gap between the forms and appearances (Plato), between the senses and intellect (Aristotle), between the senses and intellectus (Pico), and between sensibility and the understanding (Kant).1 Taking my cue from Sallis’ (1995) analysis of imagination in Delimitations: Phenomenology and the End of Metaphysics (Delimitations henceforth), in a chapter titled “Imagination and Metaphysics,” I demonstrate that in Plato, Aristotle, Pico and Kant, imagination plays an ambiguous role in that it is posited as being essential in some respect 1 The texts to be analyzed include Plato’s The Republic (Politeia in the original Greek); Aristotle’s De Anima, Poetics and De Insomniis; Pico’s On the Imagination; and Immanuel Kant’s Critique. For a comprehensive exploration of the various conceptions and understandings of imagination across different traditions, refer to Stevenson (2003). Vol. XLV | 3 yet vilified and condemned in their philosophical articulations.2 I argue further that this ambiguity regarding the role of imagination is very much a function of its status as mediation. I therefore undertake to briefly trace and articulate how imagination has been, on the one hand, availed of, employed and integrated into the theories of Plato, Aristotle, Pico and Kant, and on the other, with a view to preserving and ensuring that the extent of imagination’s effects do not impinge upon the integrity and independence of the logos and reason, has been jettisoned or excised. The ensuing investigation proceeds by way of a textual analysis of the works of these thinkers where imagination has been touched upon. A critique may, however, arise regarding the methodology employed in this study, arguing that by concentrating solely on the works of Plato, Aristotle, Pico and Kant, it fails to offer a comprehensive evaluation of the evolution of the concept of imagination within the classical Western metaphysical tradition. Instead, it provides a rather narrow perspective. In response to this critique, I would like to assert— drawing upon the insights of Sallis (1995), Brann (1991), Kind (2017), Ricoeur (1975) and to some extent, Geniusas (2022)—that my approach is indeed valid. This is because Plato, Aristotle, Pico and Kant have each dedicated significant attention to the concept of imagination, encompassing its pivotal implications. Therefore, it can be convincingly argued that these philosophers are exemplary representatives of their respective eras in terms of the discourse on imagination. In undertaking these tasks, I demonstrate two key points. First, despite the cloud of ambiguity surrounding it, imagination has 2 In an article, Morley (2005) registers the following general diagnosis: imagination is an essential and inseparable component of consciousness and culture, yet it has been neglected and marginalized by academic psychology and philosophy throughout history. He writes: “Imagination has often been associated with illusion, falsehood, and error, and relegated to a subordinate role compared to other faculties such as perception, reason, and emotion. Rather than being recognized as a distinct and valuable modality, imagination has only been seen as a transitional or mediating function between them” (Morley 2005: p. 117). 4 Classical Imagination: Un-Neccessary Mediator undeniably played a central role in classical metaphysics. Second, a reevaluation of imagination’s role within this field can pave the way for a fresh assessment of its significance in philosophy as a whole. By presenting these arguments, I reappraise imagination’s position in classical Western metaphysics and open up, albeit only preliminarily, a possibility for a renewed evaluation of its role in philosophy and thinking in light of the post-Kantian developments such as Husserlian phenomenology. Subordinating Imagination to Reason In his book The Passion of the Western Mind, Tarnas (1993) argues that Plato’s philosophy revolves around a cardinal doctrine known as the “archetypal forms.” According to Plato, the forms serve as the ultimate source of all appearances and are therefore the fundamental essence behind everything in the empirical world. Plato’s emphasis on the existence of eidos, or the realm of forms, highlights the distinction between the world of appearances and the realm of eidos. The former consists of mere copies or imitations of the real, the original, which resides in the eternal and unchanging realm of forms. Plato’s (2016) division between the world of appearances and the world of eidos posits an epistemological problematic regarding how the would-be philosopher and seeker of the eidos reaches that point where, as Socrates has it, one “would no longer be seeing an image… but the truth itself ” (p. 212).3 In this epistemological problematic brought about by Plato’s positing of the forms, the eikón (image) or Plato’s eikastic imagination assumes a vital role in the process of apprehending eidos. Plato’s eikastic imagination is not merely a simple mediation between the world of appearances and the world of eidos but is a multi-stage process, as the cave allegory with its piecemeal advance towards the forms illustrates. Eikastic imagination, Sallis (1995) maintains, is involved on each occasion that the would-be-philosopher sees through the image 3 It is important to note, however, that in this specific passage, when Plato speaks through Socrates about the eidos, Socrates quickly clarifies that he perceives the eidos, and not just the image(s), at least “as it appears to him.” Vol. XLV | 5 to the original. Hence, the progression of the would-be philosopher towards the truth is akin to a gradual peregrination from the sensible to the intelligible world, from appearances to the forms, from shadows, images, reflections to the original. There is thus a shift from empirical (appearances) to transcendental (Greek: eidos, Latin: forma). A full-blown discussion of the divide between the world of eidos and appearances comes into view in Books Six and Seven of Politeia where Plato demonstrates the supremacy of the world of eidos over the world of appearances. The world of eidos is the source of not only the empirically existing things but also the font to which the faculty of understanding owes its knowing power. In Book Six, Plato draws the divide between the intelligible and the visible region. The intelligible region comprises, firstly, the Good, and secondly, mathematical truth. The visible region contains the world of objects, and in its lowest portion, the image (eikón). In descending order, Plato assigns various faculties a role in dealing with these various classes of beings. In the case of eidos, it is reason (nous) that allows it to be known; in mathematical truth, it is intellect; in the world of objects, it is belief or the faculty of believing; finally, in images, it is imagination. The hierarchy ascending from images to empirical things, to mathematical truths, and to eidos, and the assigning of various faculties to each, sheds light on the role eikastic imagination assumes in Plato’s articulation of human ascent to truth. Interestingly, as Sallis (1995) argues in Delimitations, the “imageoriginal schema” is not only at play within the cave but also significantly at work when one of the prisoners emerges out of the cave. For when emerging from the cave into the open space above, writes he, “the escaped prisoner prepares to lift his gaze from earth to heavens; he makes his preparation by gazing at things as they are imagined, as they are, for example, reflected in pools of water” (p. 6). Plato’s turn from the sensible to the intelligible world cements the founding of metaphysics in that it posits the eidos as the source of being of all existing things in empirical world. Having posited the forms to be real, relative to the seeming appearances, Plato demonstrates metaphysics as a “drive to presence” such that “the Socratic turn constitutes the field of metaphysics as a field of presence and metaphysics itself as the drive to presence” (p. 6, cf. Derrida, 2011). As such, Plato’s eikastic imagination 6 Classical Imagination: Un-Neccessary Mediator “both empowers and inhibits the metaphysical drive to presence” (p. 7). In Phaedo 99e, we find Plato depicting the turn from the sensible to the intelligible as a turn from the beautiful to the Beautiful, from that which merely shares in the Beautiful to the fullness of Beauty, such that the beautiful owes its existence to the Beautiful. Plato articulates what constitutes the intelligible region and characterizes the eidos in a manner that justifies why such a turn is necessary thusly, “I turn back to those oft-mentioned things and proceed from them. I assume the existence of a Beautiful, itself by itself, of a Good and a Great all the rest” (Plato, 1997, p. 86). Here, Plato postulates the eidos to be the Good, the Beautiful and the Great, and thus, presents a world of appearances merely reflective of the absolute which stands superior to the empirical world. The latter, as Kearney (1998b) remarks in The Wake of Imagination (WI henceforth), is considered to be thrice removed from the original. As if to augment the interrupted discussion towards the end of Book Six, Plato in Book Seven resumes with an increasing force and clarity the discussion on the “divide” by recounting the “allegory of the cave.” Of interest to us is the gradual and painstaking yet rewarding journey of the would-be philosopher from the confines of the cave towards the world of light, since it is here that Plato’s treatment of the eikón assumes a vital role. In the cave, the prisoners consider the phantoms, reflections and images reflected into the wall in front of them as real, such that they treat the seeming to be the truth. As Plato (2016) has it: “[S]uch men would hold that the truth is nothing other than the shadows of artificial things” (p. 194). One of the prisoners unshackled himself and was “released and suddenly compelled to stand up, to turn his neck around, to walk and look up towards the light” (p. 189). The “freed prisoner’s” movement from inside the cave to the light has had a double effect on him. On the one hand, he must have gone through a painful experience of being thrown into something alien, and on the other, he must have been unable to interpret the status of the shadows to which he has been acquainted with or accustomed to for a long time. As Plato remarks: “in doing all this [...] he is in pain and because he is dazzled, is unable to make out those things whose shadows he saw before” (p. 194). Owing further to the rich and perhaps blinding clarity inherent to the nature of truth, the freed prisoner could not certainly behold the Vol. XLV | 7 light immediately such that he resorts to images and reflections until eventually he glimpses the original. Hence, if eidos is the fountainhead of all beings and the fullness of truth, then it follows that truth is blinding indeed to those who are uninitiated to it. Thus, images are necessary in human attempts to know the original; such is how Plato avails of the eikon. In going out of the cave, the prisoner penetrates through the image in order to apprehend the original, or as Sallis (1995) writes in Delimitations, “one sees through them (images) to the original which they image” (p. 6). Plato (2016) describes this activity thusly: “[A]t first, he’d most easily make out the shadows; and after that the phantoms of the human beings and other things in water, and later, the things themselves” (p. 195, cf. 517a–b). In the same vein, Plato in Phaedo proposes a similar point. However, his proposal is coupled with a stern warning propelled by the terribly blinding effect of immediately beholding the sun which he likens to an experience of directly looking at the sun’s eclipse. Socrates recounts: “I thought that I must be careful to avoid the experience of those who watch an eclipse of the sun, for some of them ruin their eyes unless they watch its reflection in water or some such material” (Plato, 1997, p. 86). In a slightly different key, Plato in Politeia 532c refers to a series of progression from the image to the original as a dialectical journey. Here, he categorically affirms the vital role eikastic imagination assumes in metaphysical enterprise itself, such that each step or progression of the would-be-philosopher from the cave towards the light allows for a gradually apprehending of eidos. Hence, eikastic imagination enables the prisoner to penetrate through the image to the original behind it. However, since this “original” is itself but a further image or reflection of another original, eikastic imagination is implicated at many stages in the path towards the original lying at the end of the series of originalcopy dyads, even if it is not involved once it is the logos that is charged with apprehending the forms itself. Therefore, Plato relies upon the eikastic imagination, but he jettisons it insofar as he avails of it only up to a certain point until logos takes over. The forms themselves are not to be modelled on a perceptual or representational model. One does not see through an image to the forms. Imagination, as modelled on a perceptual or sensible basis, thus 8 Classical Imagination: Un-Neccessary Mediator appears to be supplanted by the logos, by dialectical discourse, which is not tasked with the process of penetrating through what appears to be the case to what is true and real. The eikastic imagination is confined to a level beneath the logos and reason, even though it has furnished the model of a penetration through appearances to be integral to apprehending the original truth. Imagination is therefore assumed to have no form in the logos, in language or discourse. Thus, Plato subjugates imagination to reason. It is reason, writes Plato (2016), that propels the “real lover of learning to strive for what is” (p. 149), the eidos vis-à-vis the mere appearances. Censoring Imagination In Politeia 401b–d, Plato (2019) emphasizes the significant role of images and imagination in the education of the youth. However, he also warns about the potential negative impact of inappropriate images on their development. As a solution, Plato suggests implementing strict censorship and careful evaluation of the content produced by poets and craftsmen for the community. This approach aims to create a healthy environment that fosters the youth’s inclination to emulate real-life role models rather than fictional characters. Plato argues that these measures are essential for the overall well-being of the polis. Additionally, in Book Ten, Plato advocates for the thorough removal of images that do not align with hymns to gods or the celebration of virtuous individuals. He believes that the poets’ inclusion of fictional or false representations in their works poses a threat to the education of the guardians of the law, known as nomophylakes. The central idea here is that Plato does not entirely dismiss the role of imagination in the pursuit of truth. However, he stipulates that for imagination to be effective in this quest, it must be under the control of reason. This concept is echoed by Kearney (1998b) in WI, where he alludes to Book Six of The Republic. He suggests that Plato occasionally employs “thought-images” as they “provide a figurative representation to abstract concepts” (p. 99). However, while these thought-images or eikón assist in the pursuit of truth, Plato believes they should be set aside once the would-be-philosopher reaches a stage where reason comes onto the scene. This dominance of reason then guides the truth- Vol. XLV | 9 seeker towards the forms. Here, the seeker can perceive the sun, not merely its reflection in water or any other foreign place, but the sun itself in its own realm, and understand its true nature. Plato (2016), acknowledging the crucial role of imagination in attaining knowledge of the truth, emphatically asserts the supremacy of the eidos over the eikón. The eidos, argues he, “is the cause of all that is right and fair in everything—in the visible it gave birth to light and its sovereign; in the intelligible, itself sovereign, it provided truth and intelligence” (p. 196). Kearney articulates Plato’s privileging of reason over imagination, thus: “whereas reason (nous) is accredited with the capacity to contemplate truth, imagination is relegated to the most inferior form of human opinion—what Plato calls eikasia or illusion” (Kearney, 1998b, p. 90, cf. 1998a).4 Plato’s privileging of nous over imagination is due to the fact that “reason alone has access to the transcendental Ideas” (p. 90), while imagination has been imputed with the capacity to contaminate truth. The acquisition of knowledge about eidos is solely dependent on nous possessed by humans. Neither the penetrative nor the imitative power of imagination can lead to this understanding. Plato thus implies that phantastic imagination misguides individuals as it merely imitates and thereby produces nothing more than a “copy of a copy.”5 In essence, there exists a world of constant 4 5 Sallis rejects this simple equation of eikastic imagination with illusion, because eikastic imagination penetrates through to the original, the truth. Analyzing through the lens of Sallis’s interpretation of Plato’s concept of imagination, it becomes evident that Kearney’s perspective on Plato’s treatment of imagination may be overly simplistic. This is because imagination, according to Plato, undeniably possesses a positive facet. Sallis emphasizes that Plato’s eikastic imagination plays a crucial role in the transition from an image to its original form. However, this is merely a finite moment that eventually reaches a juncture where the nous, or intellect, must supersede the eikastic imagination. It’s important to clarify that Plato’s critique of imagination in his work, Politeia, is not directed towards the eikastic imagination, but rather the phantastic imagination. For further insight on this latter point, Gould (1964) work is recommended. 10 Classical Imagination: Un-Neccessary Mediator change, an empirical realm that is detached from the original truth, and imagination simply replicates this world. Consequently, “human imagination,” writes Kearney, “resides at a third remove from the truth” (p. 88). Furthermore, Plato (2016) equates the idolatrous nature of imagining to mirroring which reflects all sorts of things including the sun and all heavenly bodies, and thus, produces images so deceptive that “they look like they are; however, they surely are not in truth” (p. 297). Commenting on Plato’s accusation of imagination’s idolatrous nature, Kearney (1998b) writes: “[I]magination is idolatrous to the extent that it worships its own imitations instead of the divine original” (p. 94). Therefore, Plato’s criticism is directed at the phantastic imagination and not at the eikastic imagination which discerns the original behind the image. However, he still diminishes the role of both types of imagination by subjecting them to the strict control of reason. But thus far, it is the phantastic imagination that he criticizes persistently. With this articulation of Plato’s treatment of imagination, it is clear that for him, imagination is a mediation between the worlds of appearances and eidos such that it bridges between appearances and eidos. But it is a bridge which, as Kearney (1998b) has it, “like Wittgenstein’s ladder, it is [to be] thrown away as soon as it has permitted us to climb from the cave of error into the world of truth” (p. 100). Plato’s insistence that eidos by nature is always concealed limits the extent of the powers of eikastic imagination in the pursuit of truth. Sallis (1995) puts this point succinctly as follows: “[I]nsofar as the structure remains in force, every original remains withdrawn, concealed behind its image, glimpsed only through that image, not in its originary presence” (p. 7). The ambiguity thus, lies in Plato’s two determinations of imagination, the positive eikastic imagination and the negative phantastic imagination, though, even the eikastic imagination has its limits since it is superseded by the logos. While imagination first assumes a philosophical formulation in Plato, its properly psychological treatment is evinced by Aristotle in his numerous treatises more particularly in Poetics and De Anima. While the shift from Plato to Aristotle entails a shift from imagination as a metaphysical agency to being a psychological faculty, imagination’s playing the role of a mediation remains. However, in Vol. XLV | 11 Aristotle, imagination assumes the role of a “liaison-mediator,” so to speak, between the senses and the intellect. Phantasia: In-between Sensation and Reason As Kearney (1998b) observes, Aristotle stresses on the mediational role that imagination (phantasia) plays between the senses and the intellect. Phantastic imagination, writes the former, is “an intermediary between sensation and reason rather than […] an idolatrous imitation of a divine demiurge” (p. 106). This view differs fundamentally from Plato’s treatment of the phantastic imagination. In the Poetics, Aristotle salvages the artist from Plato’s categorical censuring and downplaying of imagination (cf. 1447a–1448b). Aristotle reasoned that, contrary to what Plato has been insisting regarding imagination as contaminating truth, artistic imagination plays a fundamental role in the expression of “the universal meaning of human existence” (Kearney, 1998b. p. 106). In other words, the positive capacity of art to imitate action coheres and unifies the human everyday experiences such that mimetic art spells out what Kearney calls “the essential dimension of things.” Imagination as the mimetic activity and the propelling force of artistic imitations produce, as it were, a universal truth which transcends the particularities or the specificities of a quotidian human experience.6 Aristotle (2001) speaks of this positive capacity of mimetic art by means of representation as follows: “[R]hythm alone, without harmony, is the means in the dancer’s imitations; for even he, by the rhythms of his attitudes, may represent men’s characters, as well as what they do and suffer” (p. 1455, italics mine). This view runs counter to Plato’s thesis that no such truth arises, much less a universal truth, from the activity of imagining. Aristotle maintains that imagination gathers the meaning of things, firstly, through imitation or the human-imitative power—which is basically inherent to human nature—and secondly, through our natural delight 6 Aristotle’s analysis encompasses various forms of artistic expression such as epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, and the musical arts like flute-playing and lyre-playing. Aristotle classifies these under the umbrella term “modes of imitation,” as referenced in, Poetics (specifically, sections 1447a–1448b). 12 Classical Imagination: Un-Neccessary Mediator in works of imitation. These assertions amount to Aristotle’s elevating of imagination to the level of it being responsible for the formation of a universal expression or representation of human experience. In so doing, Aristotle “redefines the notion of mīmēsis” (Kearney, 1998b, p. 106). Furthermore, one can find Aristotle’s emphasis on imitative works as having the power to express universal truth about human experiences in that telling passage in Chapter Nine of the Poetics. Here, Aristotle (2001) accords superior value to “tragedy” over “history” or historical accounts for the reason that, while history “describes the thing that has been… the other (describes) a kind of thing that might be” (p. 1464). The possible is higher than mere actuality because it sheds light on what is universal.7 Aristotle further affirms this essential role when he argues that “poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars” (p. 1464). However, while in the Poetics Aristotle recognizes imagination’s significant involvement in the production of universal truth about human experience, it is in De Anima that he elaborates on the psychological origin of images. How does Aristotle’s imagination theory differ from Plato’s? What does Aristotle’s psychological treatment of imagination as mediation between the senses and the intellect consist of? Indisputably, parallel to Plato, for Aristotle imagination (phantasia) assumes a mediational role insofar as it mediates between the senses and the intellect. However, what distinguishes his treatment of imagination from Plato is that, whereas Aristotle views the image and imagination psychologically, Plato treats imagination metaphysically. Furthermore, in De Insomniis, Aristotle rejects the Platonic thesis that images are implanted by gods in human mind or psyche and argues instead, that images are products of our human empirical experiences. However, while Aristotle considers imagination as a “species of sensation,” he distinguishes it from sensation as a whole by bestowing upon imagination the power to transmit “impressions” to the inner activities of reason. 7 In this passage, we encounter a point parallel to Husserl’s concept of “eidetic seeing,” which he extensively discussed in §70 of his work Ideas I (1913). For further exploration, I recommend the 1983 translation of this text. Vol. XLV | 13 Impressions are formed through perception or sensation, such that “the image serves as the internal representation of reality to the inner activities of reason” (Kearney, 1998b, p. 108). Put differently, while it is perception or sensation that forms “impressions,” it is imagination, by its recourse to or by its power to refer to memory, that sends these impressions to reason or intellect—and thus supplies the intellect with materials necessary for the “inner activities of reason.” So, vital indeed is imagination for Aristotle (2001) that he goes even further to claim that intellectual activity devoid of images is impossible or, as he puts it: “[W]ithout a presentation intellectual activity is impossible” (p. 608). Furthermore, Aristotle’s treatment of imagination as a kind of “picturing activity,” seems to be parallel to Plato’s, but Kearney (1998b) argues that their determinations of imagination as a picturing activity differ fundamentally on three counts. First, as observed in the Poetics and De Anima, Aristotle posits a psychological imagination. The image comes from perception (sensation) and serves as “both a window on the world and a mirror in the mind” (p. 107). Second, whereas for Aristotle imagination functions as a quintessential element allowing for intellectual activity to take place, for Plato, it is nous (reason), having usurped the role of eikastic imagination, and not imagination which functions fundamentally in intellectual activity. Third, Aristotle insists that imagination may yield to or allow for the formation of universal truths regarding everyday human experiences, while Plato dismisses the idea that imagination expresses truth, much less a universal truth. Aristotle discusses imagination in several of his works, such as the Poetics and De Memoria, but he offers a detailed analysis of it in the De Anima. In Book Three of this treatise, he differentiates imagination from perception, sensation and reason. Imagination differs from perception and from discursive thinking insofar as we can exercise our power of imagining by merely summoning images stored in our memory through sensation.8 When we imagine, we neither perceive nor sense nor judge anything. 8 Aristotle’s contention in this case comes close to what Hegel will later on, in Encyclopaedia 1830 and Lectures on Philosophy of Spirit 1827–8, call Reproduktive Einbildungskraft, or reproductive and associative imaginations, respectively (cf. Raftery-Skehan, 2012; Jalalum, 2022). 14 Classical Imagination: Un-Neccessary Mediator Aristotle (2001) elaborates on five points which distinguish imagination from perception (sensation). First, imagination, as opposed to sense, is not a faculty which concerns the activity of sight or seeing. While the faculty of sense is concerned with what is immediately present and empirically perceivable, imagination deals with images which are formed by perception or sensation. Second, imagination operates in the absence of the actual perceptual experience itself such that I can imagine a white horse which I have sensed or perceived in the past, while the perceptual sensation on the other hand “is always present” (p. 587), or as Modrak (2017) succinctly writes it: “[S]ensing cannot occur in the absence of an appropriate object” (p. 15). Third, Aristotle forwards the idea that sensations are always true, and imagination is often false.9 In view of this point, Modrak notes that for Aristotle, imagination is often false “because its connection with the external world is more attenuated, phantasia is much more liable to error” (p. 16). Fourth, in the context of “ordinary speech,” one attributes to imagination the failure to accurately recognize the object as such and such, and not to sensation. As Aristotle writes, “we do not, when sense functions precisely with regard to its object, say that we imagine it to be a man, but rather when there is some failure of accuracy in its exercise” (p. 587). The fifth distinctive mark of imagination concerns the fact that (which is closely related to the first) imagination functions “even when our eyes are shut down,” (p. 587) as in the case of a dream when we are asleep (or in daydreaming). Aristotle articulates further this characteristic of imagination in De Insomniis. Despite the essential role that imagination plays in expressing universal truths about human experiences and providing the intellect with the materials or representations it needs to function, Aristotle still regards imagination as inferior to reason. Imagination, Aristotle (2001) claims, is not among those things which are free from error such as knowledge or intelligence, “for imagination may be false” (p. 588).10 But 9 10 This perspective, nonetheless, is subject to debate. This is primarily due to Descartes’s assertion that our senses possess the potential for deception and can often mislead us. But is it not that knowledge and intelligence are also susceptible to errors? Vol. XLV | 15 it is compelling that relative to Plato, Aristotle accords to imagination the status of being a fundamental “precondition” for the intellectual activity to take place such that, as Modrak (2017) puts it: “phantasia is required for thinking” (p. 15). Hence, Aristotle provides a generous treatment of imagination relative to certain aspects of Plato’s thought on imagination. But irrespective of such a generous treatment, imagination nonetheless remains confined to its reproductive function. Imagination for Aristotle assumes the role of a servant of reason or intellect rather than the plenipotentiary and originator of truth and meaning. Thus, as Kearney informs us in WI, the view that imagination has a “productive function” such as in Kant’s treatment of the transcendental imagination, is a modern event.11 For Aristotle as well as for Plato, imagination remains an intermediary between sensation and reason, analogous to between appearances and eidos.12 Having articulated thus far Plato and Aristotle’s theories of imagination and the ambiguity obfuscating them, I now demonstrate that Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola’s treatment of imagination, in his treatise titled On the Imagination, also manifests an ambiguity. The rationale for concentrating on Pico’s treatment of imagination (imaginatio) is inspired by Sallis’s (1995) articulation of imagination in the opening chapter of Delimitations. Sallis argues that Pico clearly demonstrates “the most significant shift … in the conception of imagination … from eikastic imagination to phantastic imagination” (p. 7). The same shift recounts the soured relation between imagination and 11 12 The evolution of imagination within the framework of classical Western metaphysics, culminating in Kant’s assertion of the empirical and transcendental faculties of imagination, will be elucidated by recent scholarly works on the subject. Notable examples include Ricoeur’s 1975 lectures on imagination (still unpublished), Geniusas’s 2022 study, Brann’s 1991 research, and Kind’s 2017 exploration. I am particularly indebted to Professor Taylor, who graciously allowed me access to Ricoeur’s unpublished lectures on imagination, originally presented at the University of Chicago in 1975. I have elaborated on this point at length in a separate study “solely” devoted to Plato’s eikastic and phantastic phantasy and Aristotle’s phantasia (cf. Jalalum, 2023, forthcoming in Lumina Journal). 16 Classical Imagination: Un-Neccessary Mediator metaphysics and more generally, between imagination and philosophy in the medieval period, of which Pico’s treatment of imagination is arguably one of, if not the most dominant view. In Defense of Philosophy Early on in On the Imagination, Pico (1930) spells out the theme of his current treatise, that is, the power of the soul which he calls imaginatio (imagination). And when Pico speaks of imagination, he alludes to Aristotle’s detailed psychological articulation of phantasia in De Anima. Pico adopts Aristotle’s definition of imagination (phantasia) as a force which transmits to intellect (reason) “representations” or “images” which are stored in memory, and which are formed through perception or sensation, a “power” which, as Brann (1991) puts it, “follows upon sensation and precedes intellection, a motion and a force related to all other powers” (p. 65). Commenting on a passage in On the Imagination, Sallis demonstrates what Pico calls the horizontal and vertical axis of the imageoriginal schema. Sallis (1995) stresses that for Pico, objects themselves which the senses can present, are capable of producing images such that “they are image-makers of themselves, originals necessarily distinct from those images themselves which they produce in the soul” (p. 8). In the vertical axis, the objects’ manner of imitation mirrors or reflects the image-making performed by the soul itself. Sallis writes: “[I]t [the soul] impresses its form on the inferior, corporeal world, e.g., in the practice of an art in the classical sense” (p. 8). Furthermore, Pico (1930) claims that the soul’s imitative function duplicates the image-making which the creator performs. Clearly, he alludes to the Platonic formulation in the Timaeus of an imagination or the original creative activity of the divine demiurge in creating the cosmos. Pico asserts that imaginatio or phantastic imagination, as the soul’s power, functions essentially in knowledge-formation, or as he would put it: “nor could the soul, fettered as it is to the body, opine, know or comprehend at all, if phantasy were not constantly to supply it with the images themselves” (p. 33). Put otherwise, imagination mediates between perception and reason and supplies the intellect with materials necessary for the latter’s functioning. Vol. XLV | 17 However, Pico’s (1930) bestowing upon imagination the title, a mediator between the senses and the intellect, in no way amounts to it being a fully recognized faculty indispensable to the formation of knowledge. Imagination, he categorically declares, is “for the most part vain and wandering” (p. 29, italics mine). Pico devotes Chapter Seven of On the Imagination to accusing imagination of a plethora of malicious effects. Sallis (1995) economically summarizes Pico’s accusations as follows: “[I] magination is identified as the mother and nurse of ambition. Cruelty, wrath and passion are said to be born from and nourished by imagination” (p. 9). Furthermore, he accuses imagination of being the genesis of the defects in our judgments and all kinds of “monstrous opinions.” Moreover, Pico charges imagination as the source of sin. And more significantly, in defense of philosophy itself, Pico charges imagination with producing illusory or false fantasies detrimental to philosophizing. In his attempt to distance philosophizing from imagination, Pico (1930) suppresses the role or value of imagination relative to intellectus. The intellectus, Pico maintains, is the soul’s power which allows for the contemplation of the “purely intelligible things.” This power allows us to rule over phantasy, subjecting the latter to intellectus. In subjugating imagination to intellectus, Pico draws a line between the world of sense and that of the purely intelligible and keeps the intellect away from the contaminating force of imagination. He writes: “When the soul has withdrawn itself into the intellect, there, as in its own protected palace and enclosed citadel, it reposes and is perfected” (p. 81). Brann (1991) remarks that Pico’s subjecting of imagination to the guidance and control of intellectus is due to Pico’s conviction that human dignity demands that we obey what reason dictates rather than succumb to the deceptive lures of imagination. Brann writes: “[T]he dignity in which man is created and placed requires that he look toward the light of his inborn intellect, which Pico identifies with the light of faith in God rather than with man’s perverse imagination and its false phantoms” (p. 65). Hence, having posited the intellect as “the light of faith in God” and having proposed that imagination must be subordinated to the guidance of intellectus, Pico salvages metaphysics from an imagination construed to be contaminating and paralyzing to philosophy. 18 Classical Imagination: Un-Neccessary Mediator So far, we have seen that imagination plays a mediating role from Plato to Aristotle to Pico, which entails both positive and negative evaluations. Therefore, one could argue that imagination in the ancient and medieval philosophical traditions is limited to its reproductive function. The question then arises: how does imagination fare in modernity, before Hegel, in Kant? In the following section, I focus on Kant’s notion of the transcendental imagination in the Critique, where he presents a radical reconceptualization of imagination.13 Kant’s Transcendental Einbildungskraft: A Radical Reconception? The ambiguity regarding Kant’s treatment of the transcendental imagination can be seen by comparing the first and second editions of the Critique, as Heidegger (1997) did in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (KPM hereafter). It is worthwhile, however, to look into how Kant radically reconceives transcendental imagination. We read his radical reconception and positive evaluation of transcendental imagination in the first edition of the Critique, where he places imagination on a pedestal, whereby it has become a faculty which allows for the possibility of experience, knowledge, and cognition. Kant’s re-conception of the transcendental imagination in the first edition of the Critique is so radical indeed, that it has, as Kearney (1998b) puts it, “turned the entire hierarchy of traditional epistemology on its head” (p. 156). The imagination which has been accused of being detrimental to philosophy and jettisoned by Plato, Aristotle and Pico becomes for Kant a synthesizing faculty of human understanding—i.e. that which synthesizes the contents of sensory experience and the categories of understanding—whose power allows for the possibility of experience, cognition and knowledge. In Kant, therefore, there is shift from imagination as derivative of perception (phantasy, dreams and whatnot) to being a condition of possibility of it, this shift being from the empirical imagination to the transcendental (cf. Kant’s [2007] footnote to A120). 13 For an analysis of Kant’s Einbildungskraft and how it differs from phenomenological accounts of imagination, particularly that of Husserl, see Depraz (2018). Vol. XLV | 19 Kant adopts the empiricists’ claim in the form of all knowledge stemming from experience or there being no knowledge without experience. However, Kant seeks to reconcile the empiricist with the rationalist claim that knowledge proceeds from pure concepts. And he does so by saying that while there may be sensation without such pure concepts, there is no experience and thus no knowledge without their unity; hence, the transcendental imagination is crucial to the possibility of this unity. Kant (2007) argues that it does not necessarily follow that all knowledge has to come from experience, insofar as the faculty of understanding provides the form which allows us to experience the contents of sensory experience. He calls this latter point the “intuitionconcept relation” or more precisely, the “sensibility-understanding relation.” Intuition for its part needs concepts and concepts likewise need intuition, or as he has it: for “thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind” (p. 93). Hence, with the content of sensory experience on the one hand, and the categories of human understanding on the other it now remains for the transcendental imagination to synthesize these two (i.e. sensibility and understanding). In A78 of the first edition of the Critique, Kant categorically affirms this vital synthesizing function of the transcendental imagination thusly: “Synthesis in general, as we shall hereafter see, is the mere result of the power of imagination, a blind but indispensable function of the soul, without which we should have no knowledge whatsoever, but of which we are scarcely ever conscious” (p. 93). Otherwise put, without the transcendental imagination, Kant argues, there is definitely no knowledge, experience and cognition to speak of. Commenting on Kant’s transcendental imagination, Kearney (1998b) writes: “[I] magination thus ceases to be an arbitrary or relativizing function. It becomes instead the sine qua non of all genuine knowledge” (p. 169). But how exactly does Kant depart from the jettisoned classical concept of imagination as a mediation between the senses and the intellect in the first edition of the Critique? Kant’s distinction between the “reproductive” and the “productive” functions of imagination provides an answer. The reproductive function of imagination links the various impressions 20 Classical Imagination: Un-Neccessary Mediator of the senses and forms a series of perceptions. Put differently, it arranges perceptions by “reinstating a preceding perception alongside a subsequent one” (Kearney, 1998b, p. 170). The productive function of imagination autonomously determines which of the perceptions will be combined. However, as Kearney notes, Kant extends the productive function of imagination to what Kant calls “the unity of transcendental apperception.” “The synthesis of perception,” writes Kearney, “might well remain arbitrary unless its rules of ‘association’ and ‘affinity’ (provided by the imagination) were themselves related to a connected whole of understanding” (p. 170). In other words, devoid of the unity of “my own consciousness of these perceptions,” the synthesising power of the productive function of imagination is insufficient to totally account for the unity of synthesis of perceptions. As Kearney (1998b) has it, “this is only possible if the productive synthesis of my perceptions is coupled with the productive synthesis of my consciousness of myself as the ultimate source of unity” (p. 170). Kant argues that the transcendental ego is the transcendental imagination’s a priori rule which puts in place various perceptions which my understanding apprehends and thus unites the sequence of perceptions that I possess in light of all knowledge I have. Here, imagination is the mediating power in that it renders the pure concepts sufficiently into the form of schemas, as per the transcendental schematizing imagination, such that they can be applied to sensation and produce experience. However, while Kant’s radical reconception of imagination in the first edition of the Critique controversially elevates the transcendental imagination above reason, such is not the case in the second edition, as Heidegger argues in KPM.14 Heidegger maintains that Kant, by turning upside down the traditional conception of metaphysics in the Western philosophical 14 Geniusas (2022) makes the following remarks as regards Kant’s concept of Einbildungskraft: “Although Kant was not the first thinker to have used the concept of productive imagination (Christian Wolff and Alexander Baumgarten had already made use of it before him), he is the one who transformed it into a concept of central philosophical importance and who uncovered its genuinely transcendental problematic and significance” (p. 28). Vol. XLV | 21 tradition in the first edition of the Critique, recognized in the second edition, the effect of his controversial thesis regarding the fundamental role of the transcendental imagination. In what does Kant’s contentious claim apropos of the transcendental imagination’s role in the Critique consist of? Heidegger (1997) stresses that in the second edition of the Critique, Kant omits several compelling passages in the first edition which articulate the primacy of the transcendental imagination over reason. First, Heidegger observes that Kant omits his articulation of imagination as a “third faculty” together with sensibility and understanding. Instead, Kant analyses Locke and Hume’s discussion on “understanding.” Second, in his revision of the section on “Transcendental Deduction,” Kant has totally obliterated section A115, where he speaks of the three subjective sources of knowledge, namely, sense, imagination and apperception. Third, Kant changes the transcendental imagination’s role from being a faculty of the soul to being a faculty of understanding. Heidegger maintains that this amounts to a diminution of the role of transcendental imagination such that “it is no longer a ‘function’ in the sense of particular faculty, but instead is now just a ‘function’ as a proficiency of the faculty of understanding” (p. 115). The vital status of transcendental Einbildungskraft as the “conditio sine qua non” of knowledge in the first edition is therefore “relegated to the understanding” in the second edition of the Critique, thus rendering the transcendental imagination a faculty dependent on understanding. Or, as Heidegger puts it: “[W]hile in the first edition all synthesis, i.e. synthesis as such, sprang forth from the power of imagination as a faculty which is not reducible to sensibility or understanding, in the second edition the understanding alone now assumes the role of origin for all synthesis” (p. 115). Kant’s retreat from pursuing the thesis regarding transcendental imagination’s pivotal role in metaphysics to the traditional conception of the primacy of logos and reason over imagination is a result of his fear of the transcendental power of imagination. In Critique’s first edition, Kant bestows upon the transcendental imagination the vital role of being the precondition for the possibility of knowledge, experience and cognition, consequently salving imagination from its jettisoned fate in 22 Classical Imagination: Un-Neccessary Mediator the traditional metaphysical tradition. However, in Critique’s second edition, he consigns imagination to the faculty of understanding. As such, imagination assumes an ambiguous role as both hailed as the synthesizing faculty of human understanding and as a faculty whose functions are relegated to understanding. Heidegger (1997) puts it rather dramatically: “[I]t is not just that the transcendental power of imagination frightened [Kant], but rather that in between [the two editions] pure reason as reason drew him increasingly under its spell” (p. 118). Logos and nous played central roles or functions in the metaphysical enterprise and philosophy, and Kant’s positing of the transcendental Einbildungskraft had questioned this primacy of logos and reason. However, his later work reverted to this traditional conception. And for this reason, Kant it would seem, falls, as Brann (1991) puts it, into the category of “writers whose words do not match his deeds in the affairs of the imagination” (p. 122). Conclusion From what I have demonstrated thus far, it is clear that Plato, Aristotle, Pico and Kant consistently characterise imagination as having been availed of and jettisoned simultaneously in their philosophical articulations. Undeniably, imagination assumes a vital role in each of these thinkers’ works. However, with a view to preserving the integrity of nous and logos, imagination has been excised. This ambiguous role of imagination is a function of its mediational role between appearances and eidos, between senses and intellect, between senses and intellectus, and between sensibility and understanding. Although philosophers of antiquity, particularly those touched upon here, may have perpetuated the gesture to segregate imagination and nous for reasons adumbrated above, their texts suggest that imagination is involved to a lesser or greater degree in how they attempt to investigate matters of philosophical importance. The increasing attempt we find in these thinkers to link imagination to thinking testifies to the contention that imagination is very much involved in the activity of philosophising, which points to the significance of imagination in philosophical discourse and in discourses other than philosophy. Kant’s account, although still marred by an ambiguity, provides nonetheless to lesser or greater degree a Vol. XLV | 23 fertile ground for post-Kantian developments to reevaluate and forge an imagination which works in concert with reason or thinking. References Aristotle. (2001). De anima. In R. McKeon (Ed.), The basic works of Aristotle (pp. 469–529). Modern Library. Aristotle. (2001). De insomniis. McKeon (Ed.), The basic works of Aristotle (pp. 539–545). Modern Library. Aristotle. (2001). De memoria. In McKeon (Ed.), The basic works of Aristotle (pp. 530–538). Modern Library. Aristotle. (2001). Poetics. McKeon (Ed.), The basic works of Aristotle (pp. 1262–1292). Modern Library. 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