Journal of the History of Philosophy

Descartes and the Eclipse of Imagination, 618- 630 DENNIS L. SEPPER IS IMAGINATION OF FUNDAMENTAL IMPORTANCE to the philosophy of Descartes? If this question seems to have anything more than rhetorical force it is because imagination figured large in the early, never-completed Regulae ad directionem ingenii (Rulesfor theDirectionof theMind). But one is far more likely to think of the much-reduced stature imagination has in later works. Recall the piece of wax example in the second meditation: it is not by the senses or the imagination that we perceive the piece of wax or anything else, but by mental scrutiny, inspectio mentis (AT, 7: 3o-32; CSM, 2: 2o-22).' The sixth meditation even more decisively puts imagination in its place: I can understand a thousandsided figure as well as a triangle, but when I try to imagine it the image is not different from that of any other figure with very many sides (AT, 7: 72; CSM, 2:5o). Moreover, imagination is not part of my essence; without it, I would still be the same thing I now am (AT, 7: 73, cf. 78-79; CSM, 2:51, cf. 54-55). Imagination is weak and inessential, an aspect of mind due to the mind's being joined to a body; though it is one of those things that fall under the generic appellation "thinking," it has no central or paradigmatic role for understanding what thought is. Indeed, if we recall how, in the first meditation, imaginI wish to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for supporting my research on Descartes in a summer seminar in 1986 and the University of Dallas for the 1987 King/Haggar summer study grant that supported me in writing the first draft of this paper. I would also like to thank Marjorie Grene and the members of her 1986 NEH summer seminar on Descartes for providing a context and stimulus for this work. References to Descartes's works will cite, by volume and page, the Adam and Tannery edition (AT), Oeuvres de Descartes,eds. C. Adam and P. Tannery, new ed., 11 vols. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1964-74), and, where there is a corresponding translation, the recent English version of Cottingham et al. (CSM), ThePhilosophicalWritingsofDescartes,trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, ~ vols. (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1984-85). I have, however, often emended the English renderings of the latter in accordance with the original texts. I err on the side of excessive literalness where looser translation might gloss over connections and relations that are more striking in the original. [379] 380 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 97:3 JULY 1989 ings can be used to cast a shadow of doubt over all our presumed knowledge, we recognize that imagination tends to lead us away from truth and therefore must be surpassed, or suppressed, if we are to know anything surely. Thus, at best, imagination in the later Descartes is an aspect of mental life subordinated to understanding, at worst it is in essence the power of the evil genius that devotes all of its efforts to deceiving us. Even this brief review makes clear, however, that after losing the high status it enjoyed in the Regulaeimagination still continued to play an intriguing , and even revealing, role in Descartes's thought. F6ti, for example, has recently emphasized the discontinuities in Descartes's treatment of imagination and noted that they are valuable for interpreting the overall development of his thought, in particular for understanding the relationship of the Regulae to the later works.~In the present essay I wish to explore further the diagnostic and revelatory power of imagination in the early Descartes (1618-1630), especially with regard to the Regulae,in the course of which I hope to show that there is no really striking discontinuity before ca. 1630 , but that at about this time there occurred a decisive break with the early conception of imagination , a break that ushered in the mature Cartesian conception of human psycho-physiology that nevertheless must be understood in terms of the unresolved problems that the early theory of imagination posed. Descartes, I argue , began his philosophizing with the conviction that imagination...