So what exactly is the imagination? In a newsletter that has been running for months, you might think it time to venture a definition of our key thematic word. Well, if pressed, I might respond something as follows. The imagination manifests itself in two ways, synchronic and diachronic: that is, structural and dynamic. On the one hand, it is a power that perceives in terms of connections, inter-relations, associations, identifications, a holistic and synthesizing faculty. But the patterns it reveals are not static, for the imagination is also an energy that produces transformations, metamorphoses, new forms out of old. Nothing highly original here: my version of the imagination descends directly from the Romantic tradition. What I want to do today is to make this definition a little less abstract and philosophical. After all, my theme is the imagination as the home of human life, and although ideas are useful and sometimes necessary instruments, no one can live in a house built out of abstractions.
October 1, 2021
October 1, 2021
October 1, 2021
So what exactly is the imagination? In a newsletter that has been running for months, you might think it time to venture a definition of our key thematic word. Well, if pressed, I might respond something as follows. The imagination manifests itself in two ways, synchronic and diachronic: that is, structural and dynamic. On the one hand, it is a power that perceives in terms of connections, inter-relations, associations, identifications, a holistic and synthesizing faculty. But the patterns it reveals are not static, for the imagination is also an energy that produces transformations, metamorphoses, new forms out of old. Nothing highly original here: my version of the imagination descends directly from the Romantic tradition. What I want to do today is to make this definition a little less abstract and philosophical. After all, my theme is the imagination as the home of human life, and although ideas are useful and sometimes necessary instruments, no one can live in a house built out of abstractions.