Abstract

Western philosophy has neglected and misunderstood the cognitive possibilities offered by imagination. Philosophers generally choose to avoid imaginative discourse as much as possible due to a deep ambivalence inherited from earlier views of this mental power. This avoidance occurs, however, in spite of a deep-seated dependence on imagination in method and argumentation, particularly in analytic philosophy. The dissertation focuses primarily on an extensive survey of the most influential historical theories of mind in regard to creating this prejudice: those from the Classical tradition surrounding phantasia. The survey shows that our ways of thinking philosophically about imagination remain in crucial respects deeply Platonic, still mired in the fear that imagination will lead us astray and hinder knowledge acquisition. It also shows, however, that we remain at the same time deeply Aristotelian about imagination, believing that human knowledge acquisition requires this mental capacity for cognition to be possible. This uneasy combination of conflicting attitudes derives heavily from the influence of syncretic Neoplatonism and other Hellenic philosophical traditions which profoundly affect Western philosophy to the present day. For example, the British philosophical tradition's reliance on these earlier theories from its incipience secured a legacy of cognitive disdain toward imagination while also maintaining a deep epistemological dependence on it. Empiricisms such as those of Locke and Bacon accordingly required imagination to make knowledge possible while also expressing open contempt for it. Descartes and others outside that tradition further stressed imagination's limitations while at the same time calling for its operation far beyond the bounds they had set for it. Also traced are the Classic era's medical, rhetorical, and religious realms of imaginative discourse in order to indicate their scope of influence on the Western philosophical tradition. Through this genealogy of imagination the dissertation argues that analytic philosophy would be greatly enhanced through overcoming its fear of imagination and more comprehensively using imaginative discourse to confront many of the philosophical problems that currently face it, such as the difficulties encountered when attempting to explain or expand human mental capacities that better recognize legitimate similarity and difference in epistemology as well as ethics