Imagination in the Contemporary World and the Legacy of Romantic Literary Thought

day.  But not satire.  Satire breaks through, sharp and sincere.

Morality and new meaning, when a human being could imagine good and evil as choices that might be made without interference from a higher moral power –  these will not be topics of debate in a future where everything will be explained by DNA and environment.  Nature was once man’s teacher, and the forces of his own nature his dictator, with the whole wide world opening before him, ready to explore and conquer.  What was imagined could become real. What seemed to be real did not have to be substantiated by the senses.  Today, using imagination – not mere formulae for success – in a world where scientists declare what we should or should not think, is the hallmark of an intellectual rebel.

Our challenge, today, is to preserve “Imagination” from any definition at all.

With this in mind, look once more, please, at the “definition” which was absorbed so rapidly by you, the reader, at the beginning of this article:

imagination– Traditionally, the mental capacity for experiencing, constructing or manipulating ‘mental imagery’ (quasi-perceptual experience). Imagination is also regarded as responsible for fantasy, inventiveness, idiosyncrasy, and creative, original and insightful thought in general, and, sometimes, for a much wider range of mental activities dealing with the non-actual, such as supposing, pretending, ‘seeing as’, thinking of possibilities, and even being mistaken.  See representation.

Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind

Note the last part of this definition: ‘the mental capacity for’ ‘even being mistaken.’ To have the liberty to err, to be mistaken, to possess the ability to think

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