Table Of ContentStudies in History and Philosophy of Science 33
Dennis L. Sepper
Understanding
Imagination
The Reason of Images
Understanding Imagination
STUDIES IN HISTORY
AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
VOLUME 33
General Editor:
STEPHEN GAUKROGER, University of Sydney
Editorial Advisory Board:
RACHEL ANKENY, University of Adelaide
PETER ANSTEY, University of Otago
STEVEN FRENCH, University of Leeds
KOEN VERMEIR, Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven
OFER GAL, University of Sydney
JOHN SCHUSTER, Campion College & University of Sydney
RICHARD YEO, Griffi th University
For further volumes:
http://www.springer.com/series/5671
Dennis L. Sepper
Understanding Imagination
The Reason of Images
Dennis L. Sepper
Department of Philosophy
University of Dallas
Irving, Texas, USA
ISSN 0929-6425
ISBN 978-94-007-6506-1 ISBN 978-94-007-6507-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-6507-8
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Acknowledgments
The fi rst intimation of the project that led to this book emerged three decades ago,
when in teaching a graduate philosophy course about scientifi c method I realized
that what secondary works said about Descartes did not make sense. Descartes’s
early writings about method and mathematics focused on imagination, but the sec-
ondary accounts said or implied it was all about rationalizing intellect. In a sense the
present book continues to draw out the consequences of that intimation.
It was inevitable that, in the course of decades of gestation, I would incur more
debts than it is possible to enumerate. The ones I include here are the most outstanding
of all.
At a crucial moment the Getty Research Institute awarded me a year-long
residential research fellowship that allowed me to get this project moving.
The interaction with artists, historians, art historians, philosophers, and art
restorers gave real substance to my thinking about imagination. Many thanks,
then, to the fellows and the staff of the Institute, and to the J. Paul Getty Trust
for its support. A 2007–2008 National Endowment for the Humanities research
fellowship (FB-53295-07) made it possible for me to turn many hundreds of
pages of notes and thousands of pages of annotated photocopies into the con-
ceptual and historical heart of this book. Thanks to the University of Dallas
for awarding a concurrent sabbatical, and to the King and Haggar foundations for
their funding of the development grants for University of Dallas faculty that have
also supported my research.
I have benefi ted from the ministrations of librarians all over the world—even,
and especially, in this era of universal electronic connectivity. The staffs of the Getty
Research Institute Library in 2001–2002, the Bibliothèque nationale de France
(François Mitterand) over the last decade, and the University of Dallas Blakley
Library for thirty years, have granted my every bibliographic wish. As always I need
to express a special thanks to Mrs. Alice Puro, the interlibrary loan librarian of the
University of Dallas, for her tireless work in securing copies of even the most
obscure publications.
Many colleagues and students have taken an interest in this work and offered valu-
able criticisms and perspectives. I hope I have been as generous in return. Friends at
v
vi Acknowledgments
St. John’s College, in Annapolis and in Santa Fe, have long given encouragement,
especially Harvey Flaumenhaft. And of course there is Eva Brann, who has been an
inspiration. Without the example of her magisterial study of imagination I might not
have found my way to this project. I have often benefi ted from the words of Katherine
Pandora of the University of Oklahoma’s Department of the History of Science.
Thanks to Philipp Rosemann, chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University
of Dallas, for his sage advice. A special word of appreciation goes to members of the
Department of Psychology, especially Scott Churchill and Bob Kugelmann. If I am
not yet enough of a phenomenologist, it is my fault, not theirs.
Heartfelt thanks to Stephen Gaukroger, the editor of the series and a friend for
almost two decades. His invitation to Sydney many years ago not only gave me a
fi rst look at the Southern Cross but also opened my eyes to new approaches to
the world of early modern thought and the emergence of the sciences. His wide
interests and unfailing philosophical tact are exemplary.
I want to express my appreciation to Lynn Rohm for her promptness and skill in
designing and producing the fi gures. Thank you to Lucy Fleet of Springer-Verlag,
who has been generous with help and patient with questions, and to Gounasegarane
Shanthy’s guidance of the book’s production.
I thank Blackwell Publishing, which has granted permission for the reproduction,
in Chapter 7, of materials from two essays of mine that originally appeared in A
Companion to Rationalism , edited by Alan Nelson (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005):
“Cartesian Imaginations: The Method and Passions of Imagining” (pp. 156–176) and
“Spinoza, Leibniz, and the Rationalist Reconceptions of Imagination” (pp. 322–342).
I would be remiss if I did not mention the La Madeleine Restaurant at Midway
and Northwest Highway in Dallas. I have spent literally thousands of hours there
reading and writing, drinking their coffee, and enjoying the good cheer of the staff.
The major part of the fi rst draft of this book was written there. I want also to express
gratitude to the staffs of two Paris cafés: the Royal-Jussieu in the 5th, and La
Terrasse in the 7th. They provided uninterrupted morning writing and revising time,
with excellent café crème and croissants, every summer since 2000.
My children used to say that my wife (who is professor of history at Southern
Methodist University) and I never provided them with much of a model for work
life. They saw us sitting with a book or a notepad or a laptop, reading, writing,
and drinking coffee. Matthew is now an attorney, and Elizabeth a law professor.
They spend much of their time sitting with a book or a notepad or a laptop, reading,
writing, and drinking their beverages of choice! I thank them for helping make the
journey a rewarding one—and hope they fi nd this book more approachable and
interesting than the others! My mother, Marge, and my sister, Kathy, continue as
always to offer their support.
As for my wife, Kathleen Wellman: she read to me, I read to her, and thus we
corrected the page proofs. As you, reader, can tell, that meant many hours together!
If proofreading is not exactly romantic, it still turns out to be an act of love. I dedicate
the book to her.
Contents
1 Beginning in the Middle of Things .......................................................... 1
1.1 Constellations of Questions About Imagination .............................. 1
1.2 The Occluded-Occulted Tradition of Intelligent Imagining ............ 2
References ................................................................................................... 15
2 Locating Emergent Appearance .............................................................. 17
2.1 Some Practice of Imagining, and Thoughts About It ....................... 20
2.2 Psychologism, Antipsychologism, and the Persistence
of the Visual Model .......................................................................... 27
2.3 Limits of the Visual Model .............................................................. 31
2.4 Elementary and Complex Imagining ............................................... 37
2.5 Listening to Images .......................................................................... 40
2.6 Can Philosophers Sing?.................................................................... 44
2.7 Simple Imagining and Beyond ......................................................... 47
References ................................................................................................... 51
3 Locating Imagination: The Inceptive Field Productivity
and Differential Topology of Imagining (Plus What It Means
to Play a Game) ......................................................................................... 53
3.1 Hume’s Blue ..................................................................................... 55
3.2 From Resemblant Production to Schematized Activity in Fields .... 58
3.3 Imagination as a Release in/of/from the Conditions of Perception .... 64
3.4 The Repositioning of Imagination and the Problem
of Reifying Consciousness ............................................................... 68
3.5 Fields ................................................................................................ 72
3.6 Imaginative Topology and Topographies ......................................... 75
3.7 Placing the Topological Dynamics of Imagination .......................... 83
3.8 From Basketball Practice to the Biplanarity of Imagining ............... 87
3.9 From the Biplanarity of Imagining to the Practice of Art ................ 91
3.10 Transition: Reversing the Occlusion and Occultation of Tradition .... 96
References ................................................................................................... 100
vii
viii Contents
4 Plato and the Ontological Placement of Images ..................................... 103
4.1 Pre-Platonic Philosophy and the Emergence
of the Image–Bearer ......................................................................... 104
4.2 Image–Bearers, Figures, and Images in Plato’s Meno ..................... 114
4.3 The Use and Abuse of Images.......................................................... 121
4.4 Speech as Image, Reason as Imaginative,
and the Platonic Ontology of Imaging ............................................. 127
4.5 The Multilevel Look of Things in the Republic ............................... 137
4.6 The Paradoxes of Imaging................................................................ 142
4.7 The Ontology of Images and the Psychology
of Scenario–Imagining ..................................................................... 148
4.8 The Grand Image–Sequence of the Republic: From the Good
Itself to the Dialectical Education of the Philosopher ...................... 154
4.9 Singing and Hearing the logos ......................................................... 163
4.10 Forming an Equable Icon of the Cosmos ......................................... 169
4.11 The Perfect Image of the Cosmos as the Goal of Dialectic ............. 173
4.12 Conclusion........................................................................................ 180
References ................................................................................................... 183
5 Aristotle’s phantasia: From Animal Sensation
to Understanding Forms of Fields ........................................................... 185
5.1 Aristotle’s Physiologically Based Psychology of Imagination ........ 186
5.2 Placing Soul in Aristotelian Context ................................................ 190
5.3 Aristotle’s Imagination Conventionalized ........................................ 197
5.4 Phantasia Beyond the Conventions ................................................. 204
5.5 The Perplexities of Imagination in On the Soul III:
An Overview .................................................................................... 205
5.6 The Imagination of On the Soul III.3:
What It Is and What It Isn’t .............................................................. 210
5.7 Imagination, Sensation, Motion ....................................................... 217
5.8 What the Physics of Motion Implies ................................................ 222
5.9 From Motions of Sensation to Structures of Imagining ................... 226
5.10 What Aristotle’s Definition of Imagination Means .......................... 233
5.11 Is Imagination the Same as Intellect?............................................... 240
5.12 Parsing the Phenomenon of Thinking .............................................. 242
5.13 Thinking Imagination ....................................................................... 252
5.14 Conclusion........................................................................................ 262
References ................................................................................................... 264
6 The Dynamically Imaginative Cognition of Descartes .......................... 267
6.1 Imagination After Aristotle and Before Descartes ........................... 270
6.2 Descartes’s Starting Point ................................................................ 273
6.3 The Imagination of Notebook C ...................................................... 279
6.4 Imaginative Representation and Manipulation ................................ 284
6.5 The Dynamism of Imaginative Ingenuity ........................................ 289
6.6 How the Knowing Power Recognizes Itself in Imagining ............... 298
Contents ix
6.7 The Limits of Imagination ............................................................... 303
6.8 Imagining the Cosmos...................................................................... 307
6.9 Imagination in the Meditations ........................................................ 313
6.10 Willing, Images, and Passions .......................................................... 321
References ................................................................................................... 328
7 The Cartesian Heritage: Kant and the Conceptual Topology
of Imagination and Reason ...................................................................... 331
7.1 How Imagination Got Misplaced, Part 1: The Way
of Ideas ............................................................................................. 339
7.2 How Imagination Got Misplaced, Part 2: The Psychological
Reification of the Idea ...................................................................... 346
7.3 The Rationalist Loss of Confidence in Imagining,
and the Rise of Aesthetics ................................................................ 352
7.4 Aesthetics, Genius, and the Ordinary Mystery of Sensation:
The Need for an Expansive Concept of Imagination ....................... 359
7.5 Kant’s Response to the Challenge: Transcendental Psychology ...... 361
7.6 How Previous Philosophy Failed to See the Syntheses
of Imagination .................................................................................. 372
7.7 The Higher Syntheses ...................................................................... 377
7.8 Aesthetics, Ethics, and the Limits of Kantian Imagination .............. 383
References ................................................................................................... 397
8 After Kant: Appropriating the Conceptual Topology
of Imagination ........................................................................................... 399
8.1 The Idealist-Romantic Appropriation of Infinite
Imagination in Art ............................................................................ 400
8.2 Tendencies of the Post-Kantian Topology ....................................... 407
8.3 The Signitive Placement of Imagination .......................................... 414
8.4 If Signification Is Imaginative, Can Reason Leave
Imagination Behind? ........................................................................ 426
8.5 Wittgenstein and the Imaginative Supports of logos ........................ 430
8.6 Semiotics: Thinking the Signification of Sequenced Phantasms ..... 440
8.7 Semiology: Signs as the Fusion of Imaginative Planes .................... 454
8.8 Language as the Social Imagination of the World ........................... 464
8.9 Conclusion: The Ontology of Language .......................................... 476
References ................................................................................................... 479
9 The Ethos of Imagining ............................................................................ 483
9.1 Delimiting Imagination Rationally .................................................. 486
9.2 The Ethos of Imagining Found; or, Topological Topics
of Placing Imagination ..................................................................... 502
9.3 Conclusion: Toward a New Beginning ............................................. 512
References ................................................................................................... 525
Index ................................................................................................................. 527
