IMAGINATION AND REASON IN PLATO, ARISTOTLE, VICO, ROUSSEAU, AND KEATS
IMAGINATION AND REASON IN PLATO, ARISTOTLE, VICO, ROUSSEAU, AND KEATS AN ESSAY ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF EXPERIENCE by J. J. CHAMBLISS II MARTINUS NIJHOFF / THE HAGUE / 1974
1974 by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st Edition 1974 All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form ISBN-13: 978-90-247-1598-5 e-isbn-13: 978-94-010-2039-8 001: 10.1007/978-94-010-2039-8
PREFACE The present essay grew out of an inte:rest in exploring the relationship between "imagination" and "reason" in the history of naturalistic thinking. The essay tries to show something of the spirit of naturalism coming to terms with the place of imagination and reason in knowing, making, and doing as activities of human experience. This spirit is discussed by taking as its point of departure the thinking of five writers: Plato, Aristotle, Giambattista Vieo, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Keats. Plato and Aristotle are considered as spokesmen of reason in a world which appeared to be dominated by non-reason. They found it essential for human beings to try to learn how to distinguish between the work of imagination and the work of reason. In trying to make such a distinction, it becomes clear that imagination has its legitimate place, along with reason, in human activity. Or we might say that determining the place which each has is a continuing problem when human beings take seriously what is involved in shaping mind and character. Vieo, working largely outside the mainstream of the better-known eighteenth-century thinkers, created a work which he called a "New Science." For our purposes, its suggestiveness lie:s in the way in which the relationship between imagination and reason is treated historically, if we understand history to be poetry, anthropology, and philosophy all molded into one discipline. Its account of human beings growing to their present nature is a "genesis" and an "origin of the human species." In the story "imagination" comes to take on a meaning of no less import than "reason." Vico tells us that we cannot understand what it means for human beings to have become philosophers unless we first know what it means for them to have been poets. Vico helps prepare us for Rousseau, whose account of the origins of the human condition is a work of the imagination, an imagination that hungers for reason. Rousseau was enough of a man of the Enlightenment to seek a world whieh is rational, one in which the social and moral conditions would
VI PREFACE be those with which a rational man could live. But his story of the education of Emile shows us, in the end, a rational young man who realizes that he can do no better than live in the world but not be of it. Keats was a poet who came to sense the possibilities of philosophy, even to wonder if it was superior to poetry. In striving to temper his imagination with reason, he gave expression to a poetry which is a celebration of the idea that imagination works best when it is informed by reason. A comprehensive history of the relationship between imagination and reason is not provided here. Rather the controlling aim in the writing of the essay has been limited to a discussion of certain lines of thinking which were found to be common to the five writers, while respecting them as individuals. Once the variety of their ideas is explored, the common ground on which they stand may well be even more compelling. Hal G. Lewis, Jr., Victor Kestenbaum, and David Muschinske read an earlier version of the essay and made helpful suggestions. And it must be mentioned that Thea, Harry, and Tenley were never far away.
T ABLE OF CONTENTS Preface v I. Introduction I II. Plato: Author of the Philosopher's Tragedy 6 III. Aristotle: The Artful in Nature and the Natural in Art 20 IV. Vico: Poetic and Rational Metaphysics 29 V. Rousseau's Men: As Nature Makes Them, and as They make Themselves 44 VI. John Keats: An Eagle and a Truth 58 VII. Imagination, Reason, and the Precarious Nature of Existence 67 Bibliographical Note 72