Imagination as ability and power

Abstract

Partially due to the simplified translation of Aristotle’s term we have inherited his idea that imagination is a certain dynamis, i. e. an inborn ability. Thus, in diverse theories the main definition of imagination is formulated in terms of its relationship to reality. Imagined is something that is not actual and, consequently, not real. However, contemporary scholars, such as Kearney and Sallis, understood the ‘classical’ (Plato’s and
Aristotle’s) function of phantasia and eikasia in a new way: imagination is not defined either through itself or through the subject or context, it has to be prior both to the activating stimulus, to its functions and to its effects. Every perception is already a certain imagination, only woven with a thread of a different colour into a continuous interaction linking irreality, movement, desire and reality. The paper tries to show that an analysis
of imagination, understood in its ‘exorbitant traits’, is concurrent to the investigation of perception in more general terms.