Thinking Through the Imagination: Aesthetics in Human Cognition
Feb 2014 · Fordham Univ Press
Ebook
272
Pages
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About this ebook
Use your imagination! The demand is as important as it is confusing. What is the imagination? What is its value? Where does it come from? And where is it going in a time when even the obscene mseems overdone and passé?
This book takes up these questions and argues for the centrality of imagination in humanmcognition. It traces the development of the imagination in Kant’s critical philosophy (particularly the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment) and claims that the insights of Kantian aesthetic theory, especially concerning the nature of creativity, common sense, and genius, influenced the development of nineteenth-century American philosophy.
The book identifies the central role of the imagination in the philosophy of Peirce, a role often overlooked in analytic treatments of his thought. The final chapters pursue the observation made by Kant and Peirce that imaginative genius is a type of natural gift (ingenium) and must in some way be continuous with the creative force of nature. It makes this final turn by way of contemporary studies of metaphor, embodied cognition, and cognitive neuroscience.
This book takes up these questions and argues for the centrality of imagination in humanmcognition. It traces the development of the imagination in Kant’s critical philosophy (particularly the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment) and claims that the insights of Kantian aesthetic theory, especially concerning the nature of creativity, common sense, and genius, influenced the development of nineteenth-century American philosophy.
The book identifies the central role of the imagination in the philosophy of Peirce, a role often overlooked in analytic treatments of his thought. The final chapters pursue the observation made by Kant and Peirce that imaginative genius is a type of natural gift (ingenium) and must in some way be continuous with the creative force of nature. It makes this final turn by way of contemporary studies of metaphor, embodied cognition, and cognitive neuroscience.
About the author
John Kaag is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He is the author of Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life (Princeton, 2020, Finalist, 2021 PROSE Award), Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018, pbk Picador, 2019, NPR Book of the Year), American Philosophy: A Love Story (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2016, NPR Book of the Year, New York Times Editors’ Choice), and Idealism, Pragmatism, and Feminism: The Philosophy of Ella Lyman Cabot (Lexington, 2013), and coauthor with Sarah Kreps of Drone Warfare (Polity, 2015, Choice Outstanding Title).
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