A World Not of this World: The Reality of Images and Imagination

What do we mean by imagination? Is the image, as a long tradition has insisted, the faint copy of the thing? If not, and images can be of different kinds, how can we distinguish among them? What is the relation between image and word? Can imagination be simply the faculty for images? Is imagination fiction or escape from reality, or can we ascribe a cognitive function to it? Must we call into question the widespread reduction of imagination to a solely theoretical faculty of a pure ego, i.e., a mental and private space, at the expense of its practical, intersubjective, affective aspects? This book seeks a systematic and comprehensive answer to these questions. It begins by disputing several commonplaces on images and imagination, both in everyday language and in many traditional scholarly approaches. It continues by examining the power of fascination images have on us. After these indispensable premises aimed at narrowing down the field of inquiry, this volume seeks an analysis of the twofold nature of every image (the image is something in itself, and yet refers to what it is an image of) and specifies the criteria by which we distinguish natural, artificial, mental and memory images. It then proceeds to probe the heuristic and cognitive functions of imagination, as well as the notions of fiction, play, and literary creation. Finally, the book shows the necessity of broadening the understanding of imagination, from the suspension of the world to the manifold ways in which it works to transform it.