Locating Imaginative Activity in the History of Western Thought
FAIN: FB-53295-07
Dennis Lee Sepper
University of Dallas (Irving, TX 75062-4736)
"Placing Imagination" is a philosophical history of the Western experience of imagination. Through the history it develops a core theory of what imagining is. The history shows that Plato and Aristotle initiated a conception of imagining and its place between sense-perception and reason that gave rise to a theory that prospered for 2000 years. Though Rationalism and Romanticism appeared to deliver the theory a decisive blow, the core elements survived by being implicitly taken up in the so-called “linguistic turn” of philosophy and the human sciences. This history leads to a viable conception of imagining that can help us articulate contemporary experience and outline parameters for future theories of imagination.