Imagination IV

When we are engulfed by imagination, we lose the sense of reality, hence of quality. It is important to see that it is through reality that we attain quality, and through quality that we attain reality... not at all through imagination! We have so much difficulty in inducing substance that it is always possible to slide into a figurative mode, whereas quality puts us in direct contact with reality. In fact, substance is completely overlooked in today's world; not only do we replace it by relation of reason (i.e . the "universal", One from the multiple, Being as an abstraction) but we don't distinguish relation of reason and real relation. Hence, we cannot discover what realism is, as relation dispenses of distinguishing between realism and idealism.

In the order of Being, if we do not ask the question what is the is of the judgement of existence "this is" (i.e. what is Being), our experiences are always susceptible of being idealized and of being enveloped by our imagination. Why do quantity and imagination often go hand in hand? In my view, it is because quantity has no limits. Incidentally, quantity plays a huge role in psychology. To let oneself be taken down the river of quantity can give us a thrill not unlike that of rafting. In any case, one can well measure the difference between the Freudian and the Aristolian vision... for the former, our sleep and our vegetative life are the peak of the human person, whereas for the latter the peak is the spiritual soul: intelligence and will in act.


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Imagination III

Imagination is borne of the body. It is what is most subtle in it. It indubitably comes from it for it is grounded in our senses (hence the body). Without a body, no imagination. Hey, do you realize "angels" don't have an imagination!? Hard to imagine, huh? :wink:

It's a curious thing because imagination proceeds from the body and at the same time it seeks to separate itself from it.That's what imagination and virtuality are: a world that could exist but doesn't; a world that proceeds from reality but that is not reality.

There is an affective virtuality, a mathematical virtuality, a scientific virtuality, an artistic virtuality. It is because this make believe world, which once more doesn't exist but could exist, proceeds from me that I like it so much and that it often interests me much more than reality itself.

In short, however this subject warrants a much longer development, the body, hence imagination, is terribly limited, but it is positive in as much as it enables the soul to live of sensibility. That will be all for today. At ease! ;-)

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Imagination II

I was saying that imagination is intermediary between the sensible realities and intelligence, i.e. between our experience of reality and our spirit. Yet we take our imagination for experience, even though a purely "imaginary being" has no experience of anything more than himself. For imagination is grounded in reality, that's for sure, but viewed on its own it comes from itself, whereas experience embraces reality in a direct manner, i.e. something that is not us. Imagination is therefore always idealizing. It enables us to take some short trips for free, sometimes lovely ones, other times not as much. Imagination thus never comes first, it is always second, and above all it has no end, it is an errant cause, even autistic, for it may have no other purpose than itself and separates itself at the same time from reality and intelligence. Someone who is completely taken by his imagination does not have a clear direction of where he is headed, especially if for that person, more or less consciously what's more, imagination has become his whole life, that is to say has taken over.

One must acknowledge that we all more or less have a proclivity to be like this, and if we had a thermometer to take our imaginative temperature, an imaginativometer, we would imo be rather surprised at the result. Ultimately, our imagination wrestles constantly with experience, and this is quite understandable since it enables the first step back... face to face with reality.

Incidentally, people who are engulfed by imagination cannot love, simply put because the other person is a reality, not a character of a virtual short story or of a cartoon. Imaginary friendship is quite meagre!

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Imagination

Someone recently pointed out to me that intelligence is intimately mixed with imagination. This assertion bothered me and I pondered over it for a few days.

Imagination is not mixed with intelligence, it is "metaxu", that is to say intermediary (in Greek metaxu means "in between"). Imagination is intermediary between intelligence and the senses. When we perceive something of reality, through one of our 5 senses (and we know nothing without them, nor can we imagine anything), imagination depicts sensations before handing them over to intelligence. Then memory stocks these images, and imagination can work and "play" with what it has at hand, but it must firstly constitute a stock from our sensations.

Thus, imagination is linked to intelligence, all right, but in a very precise manner, not indistinctively mixed with it, but as an intermediary between the sensible reality and with it, at least normally and most of the time, because some live with their imagination cut off from reality almost all of their waking hours, and, one might say, from their intelligence.

So this interested me, because after having rethought about what precedes, I realized more distinctly that imagination is neither good nor bad. It does not and it cannot distinguish between what is good and what is bad. It is amoral. Why? Quite simply because goodness and malignity are not imaginary... they are real! Yet with imagination we find ourselves in a place which is truly... imaginary.

This begets a question: what is psyche? Well it is simply imagination... a place which I create myself, situated beyond good and bad in as much as it is precisely imaginary. Consequently, here is a simple demonstration that psychologists can do nothing else but describe and in no way can see the end, that is to say what is good and what is bad. They can only describe what is pleasant and what is not, which is not at all the same!

That's all for now folks, but there are many things to see from this viewpoint. I am even under the impression that this is a very good angle of approach to see almost anything that is worth seeing. :-)

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