Imagination as Resource and Limit of Mental Life in Hobbes
Milanese, Arnaud
Imagination as Resource and Limit of Mental Life in Hobbes - 2026.
59
What role does imagination play in Hobbes’s account of mental life? Since sensation is the primary source of thoughts and passions, imagination initially appears to be secondary. However, Hobbes also describes sensation as a form of imagination (fancy). Thus, memory, passions, judgment, mental discourse, etc. are not opposed to imagination, but rather constitute its modalities. Imagination is less an instrumental faculty than the source of the associations and meanings that constitute us. Hence Hobbes’s precise attention to the work of the imagination, whose epistemic consequences must be measured: it ensures our relationship to reality, but cannot guarantee its certainty.
Imagination as Resource and Limit of Mental Life in Hobbes - 2026.
59
What role does imagination play in Hobbes’s account of mental life? Since sensation is the primary source of thoughts and passions, imagination initially appears to be secondary. However, Hobbes also describes sensation as a form of imagination (fancy). Thus, memory, passions, judgment, mental discourse, etc. are not opposed to imagination, but rather constitute its modalities. Imagination is less an instrumental faculty than the source of the associations and meanings that constitute us. Hence Hobbes’s precise attention to the work of the imagination, whose epistemic consequences must be measured: it ensures our relationship to reality, but cannot guarantee its certainty.
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