Educating for the Imagination

http://ultibase.rmit.edu.au/Articles/dec99/heath1.htm

Author: Dr. Gregory Heath

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University

Keywords: Higher Education, Cornelius Castoriadis, Immanuel Kant, philosophy, radical imagination, critical reflection, self, other, intersubjectivity, corporatism.

Article style and Source: Peer Reviewed. Original ultiBASE publication.

Contents

Abstract

This paper discusses the discovery of the radical imagination in Aristotle and Kant. Following Castoriadis it claims that the radical imagination was discovered and then, curiously as it were, once again "lost". The radical imagination can be distinguished from the more familiar type of imagination in that it is present in the category of ontology and is necessary for the attribution of being to both self and to the objects of experience. In this sense it is essential to the creation and re-creation of the lifeworld. It is then claimed that the process of education, particularly higher education, now precludes the cultivation of the radical imagination in the processes of learning and the discovery process of research. This is seen as a major threat to universities as distinctive key social institutions based on the autonomy of scholarship.

Introduction

This paper is about the capacities of the soul. It is about how it is still the role of education to develop those capacities and the central role that the imagination plays in the process.

The paper works on two levels. The underlying level relates to the role of the capacity of the imagination in the fundamental category of ontology. The other level relates to what education, and particularly higher education, does and does not do; how it now largely disdains the imagination.

The Discovery of the Radical Imagination

I am indebted to Cornelius Castoriadis for the inspirations behind this paper. In particular to a paper of his entitled The Discovery of the Imagination, originally intended as part of a larger work, published in Constellations in 1994 and reproduced in the collection World in Fragments (1997). 1

In this paper he refers to two, and only two, moments in the history of philosophy when the radical imaginary has emerged. The first is in book three of the De Anima and the second is in Kant’s Critique of Judgement. Castoriadis has a further interest in his paper as to why this has occurred only twice. And in particular why on each occasion it has rapidly disappeared; why there has been such hasty cover up. Or as he puts it characterising Heidegger, such a hasty retreat from the "bottomless abyss" faced by the discovery of what he calls the "radical imaginary".

Castoriadis observes that Aristotle discovers the imagination twice in the De Anima. First he discovers the conventional imagination, the capacity to represent to the mind what is not present and then later the radical imagination. Castoriadis refers to the radical imagination as the first imagination because of its primacy in grounding all imagination and the representative imagination the second imagination. He comments that the discussion of the imagination in the De Anima proceeds along conventional lines where the cognitive potentialities of sensation, imagination and intellection are discussed until in Book III Chapters 7 &8 the order of the work is "brutally shattered" by the introduction of the question of the phantasia. He further says that this discovery by Aristotle recasts the whole basis of ontology giving the imagination a role in the formation of being. And further that the discovery shifts the whole locus of philosophy from its emphasis on epistemology to an emphasis on ontology.

What is this discovery that Castoriadis ranks so highly? Put as simply as possible it is that without the imagination there could not be thought, nor could there be any attribution of being to the objects of thought or sense. This discovery is to be taken further by Kant who, through the inexorable process of critical philosophy discovered, not only that there can be no reason without freedom, but also that there can be no freedom without the imagination. At this point in Kant’s late philosophy he found that he had threatened the foundations of his own metaphysics; thus the abyss. That is to say it was beginning to look as if the transcendental imagination could be autonomous of the categories.

In the De Anima Aristotle establishes in Book II Ch 3 that the imagination is a separate power or capacity of the soul, it is not derivative of opinion nor of sensation nor of belief. But it is then that he proceeds to say some remarkable things. The first is that "The soul never thinks without a phantasm (image)". "The faculty of thinking then thinks the forms in the phantasms (images)…" Then in the very short chapter Aristotle in his summary of the soul relates the soul to the imagination. He says that the soul is in a way all beings for beings are either sensible or intelligible and knowledge in a certain sense the knowables and sensation the sensibles; how that is we must find out. It is the forms of these things that are in the soul, obviously not their matter "so that the soul is like the hand, for the hand too is a tool of tools, and thought form of forms and sensation form of sensible... and this is why, when one thinks it is necessary to contemplate some phantasm, for phantasms are like sensations, but without matter". 2

Castoriadis continues to observe that the treatment of the imagination in these critical passages lacks a degree of coherence, but that is not the point. A whole new understanding of the imagination has just burst through into philosophy. It is one that puts the imagination at the centre of our own being and also simultaneously at the centre of understanding of beings. As Aristotle has already said mind is itself thinkable in exactly the same way as its objects are. We can see that the reflexive turn in philosophy had some precursors.

The imagination which emerges here is not the simple imagination that is able to represent images that are not present to the senses, nor to juxtapose images in a novel way. It is an autonomous capacity of the soul to create images in thought and sensation so that the soul might, as it were, receive and by thus receiving give being to the thought or sensed objects.

There are a number of issues here that in a full exposition would need a strong critical evaluation; not least Aristotle’s whole notion of the soul. Some would claim a notion out of fashion at least since Hume’s attack on the Cartesian "inner". I would disagree and be prepared to provide a reconstructive defence of Aristotle, but that is not my purpose here. My purpose is to give a strong account of the imagination as an essential human capacity and to show how we fail to recognise and develop it. top

Aristotle's Imaginary as a Power of the Soul

Aristotle’s radical imagination can be a bit hard to grasp at first. It is the seed of what has been variously called the dialectical imagination or the transcendental imagination. It is the capacity to imagine as other what is presented either via the senses or conceptually. It is the capacity to be other to another being, and in turn to grant or deny assent to another being. It is not least the moment that makes possible critical philosophy which was not to find a real expression until twenty-one centuries later in the Critique of Pure Reason.

The "rupture" in the De Anima arises from Aristotles’ need here to give an account of nous as it connects to the subjective element in humans. Particularly at issue is how the objective recognition of a particular falling under a form can connect to the subjective recognition that assent is required; how the intuition connects to the fact of reason. This was the same question that led Kant to explore the subject element in the later critiques. It is still critical to the objective/subjective division that plagues philosophy and the social sciences today. Aristotle had reached the point where he could no longer treat the imagination as a purely formal element. He had to take account of the psychic dimension that which connects the "this being" to the other being; the self to the other.

How can the soul be the "form of forms"? What is it that connects the inner of the soul as the potential form to the out of the objective form itself? What is the link, what is the bridge?

Aristotle has explored sensation and the intellectual power and found them both wanting. But both wanting in a most curious sense. It is not the presence to the soul that is a problem for the senses, nor is it the completeness concept in the intellection. It is the failure of the attribution of being. There is a further constituent required. That is the ability to envision the content of sense or of thought as an image in order to judge it as itself as or as other. But where do the phantasms come from and what is that gives them the power to guide judgement? Aristotle is clear that the soul has the power, under certain circumstances to generate the phantasms. Just what these circumstances are he does not fully explain. There are some pointers to what he might mean however. These can drawn fro both the De Anima and other texts, particularly the Nicomachean Ethics Book IX Capter 9 where Aristotle discusses self reflection and self love implying that self consciousness depends on other consciousness. In a sense implying the primacy of intersubjectivity over subjectivity.

To start with the De Anima; Aristotle, on close inspection says some remarkable things. I would like to take a little time for some close analysis

Aristotle says in Chapter 8, " And now summing up what we have said about the soul, let us say again that the soul is in a certain fashion all the beings, for the beings are either sensible or intelligible, and knowledge is in a certain fashion the knowables and sensation the sensibles; how that is we must seek to find out." 3

He then says that "the sensitive and knowing elements of the soul are potentially the knowable and the sensible. And they necessarily must be either the things themselves or their forms. The former alternative is of course impossible: it is not the stone which is present in the soul but its form. " They are of course the forms without matter, "so that the soul is like the hand, for the hand too is a tool of tools, and thought form of forms and sensation form of sensibles." The soul here has the power to realise thought and sensation. Without this power actuality of the objects of thought and sense would not be.

Aristotle continues, "and there is nothing, it seems, having-been-separated and apart from sensible magnitudes, the intelligibles are in the sensible forms, both those that are said by abstraction and those that are dispositions and affections of sensibles. And this is the reason why if one sensed nothing one could learn and understand nothing; and why when one thinks, it is necessary that at the same time one contemplate some phantasm, for phantasms are like sensations, but without matter."

This passage remains obscure, even in Castoriadis’ literal translation, but I think we can see what Aristotle is driving at, or as Castoriadis would have it, burst in upon. It is that the objects of sense and thought are potentially with the soul; the "inner" domain of persons. And that it is the presence of some image or phantasm, abstract or representative, that is the ground of knowledge.

Furthermore it is the contemplation of the image that is the source of the beingness of things. This is the really radical step of the "first" imagination. Ontology is inner.

One way in which Aristotle expresses this is to say that the form is not determined by the matter, "it is not the rock that is in the soul, but the form", and this form can be represented in its aspects of sense and thought. It is the contemplation on the phantasm that determines that is a rock. Not that we know it is a rock, that can come later.

Aristotle really goes no further at this point in the exposition of this radical imagination although much more can be said. It is necessary to make some further observations. The first is that the radical imagination applies to the self. Indeed Aristotle says as much. But the more radical implication is that we could have neither a sense of self nor a self as we conceive of self without the capacity to imagine a self. As Aristotle says the higher animals lack a sense of self as they also lack the first imagination. top

Kant's Rediscovery of the Radical Imagination

Castoriadis observes that is not until 21 centuries later that the radical imagination surfaces again in philosophy in the Critique of Pure Reason. It surfaces as the transcendental imagination in the Transcendental Aesthetic.

Kant's aim in the Critique of Pure Reason is to rescue reason from "darkness and contradiction" and, via the transcendental method, to reinstate metaphysics from "a matron outcast and forsaken" to "Queen of all the sciences;". 4 His strategy was to use the transcendental method to show that experience required an a priori component. This he explored in the Transcendental Aesthetic, demonstrating that both analytic and synthetic a priori judgements were involved. The analytic a priori gives us access to the truths of reason and the synthetic a priori access to truths about the world. The a priori is based on the intuitions of space and time. The importance of a priori knowledge for Kant is that it will lead to "knowledge absolutely independent of all experience." 5 Thus showing, in the case of a priori synthetic knowledge, that it is possible to have knowledge of the world that is true and universal which does not depend upon experience. By this radical move Kant aims to answer Hume's scepticism and show that reason has a place in knowledge that depends on experience. The radical move was to locate the intuitions of space and time "in us". What is received by the mind is given form by bringing it under the intuitions of space and time. Space is the outer sense that relates the mind to objects 6 and time the inner sense or "form of our inner intuition" 7 by which we represent our inner dimensions to consciousness. The capacity that facilitates the structuring of the intuitions of space and time is the transcendental imagination. "Transcendental" in this context refers to the conditions which give form to experience. This is a capacity of the mind for Kant which is contained in the essence of experience.

Kant is here picking up on and amplifying Aristotles’ discovery of the radial imagination to make a new move in philosophy. The importance of this move cannot be underestimated. It is the basis for the recognition that there is an act of critical reflection that both structures and renders comprehensible the world of experience. It is this recognition that has made the social sciences, particularly psychology and sociology, possible by leading to the view that the world, and particularly the social world, needs to be interpreted to be comprehensible.

However Kant, having taken his "Copernican step" was then led by a series of steps from reason to freedom to the imagination and then even laster to communicability as the ground for transcendental philosophy and the basis of metaphysics. I will briefly sketch the step from reason to freedom and from freedom to the imagination. Kant with great intellectual honesty came to see that the power of reason was impotent without freedom. Unless there was a free will to direct reasoning reason would be utterly deterministic and without and transcendental element. It would therefore lack the reflective element necessary for critical philosophy.

How was he to reconcile freedom with the "transcendental deduction" of the first critique? His attempt to reconcile it was via The Critique of Practical Reason. Here he conducts a critique of reason as pure practical reason and not just pure speculative reason alone. The cornerstone of the critique becomes transcendental freedom rather than the transcendental deduction with the intuitions of space and time. In this critique of practical reason, it is not intuition that is fundamental to rational beings, but rather their freedom. The notion of freedom here becomes transcendental because the process of critical reflection on the comprehension of the moral law, the categorical imperative, proves that the conditions for such comprehension necessarily imply that such a being is free in the direction of its own will. Kant is exceptionally, one might even say uncharacteristically, lucid on this point in a passage from the Preface to the Critique of Practical Reason. The passage is worthy of quotation at length.

Inasmuch as the reality of the concept of freedom is proved by an apodictic law of practical reason, it is the keystone of the whole system of pure reason, even the speculative, and all other concepts (those of God and immortality) which, as being mere ideas, remain in it unsupported, now attach themselves to this concept, and by it obtain consistence and objective reality; that is to say their possibility is proved by the fact that freedom actually exists, for this idea is revealed by the moral law.

Freedom, however, is the only one of all the ideas of the speculative reason of which we know the possibility á priori (without, however understanding it), because it is the condition of the moral law which we know. 8

This remarkable passage indicates a substantially different perspective to that of the first critique and, despite Kant's claims to the contrary, renders redundant or peripheral much of the first critique. Kant says that the purpose of the Critique of Practical Reason is to show that there is pure practical reason and by the process of critique show that pure reason can be practical in that it can, and indeed if it can then must, determine the will by the moral law and thus it discloses the basis of transcendental freedom.

Kant, having got this far, then finds that he has a further problem. If freedom is the transcendental condition for comprehension of the moral law then there must a something that is free, a being as the bearer of an autonomous will. The notion of freedom is not part of the empirical world, and can only come to us a priori and thus involves a transcendental element; which further demonstrates the universality of the moral law and establishes freedom as part of the "intelligible" world and links it to the noumena. A being that is free to act in accordance with the moral law must be self-ruling and is therefore an autonomous being. Any being thus able to act must be a being-in-itself and thus possessing "personality". Such a being is an end-in-itself and thus a member of the "kingdom of ends" and worthy of respect as such.

Kant has here established that humans, as autonomous rational beings, are indeed independent and self-responsible. He has succeeded in reaching a position similar to the conclusion of the Cartesian argument for personhood but avoiding the pitfalls associated with Descartes introspective method. The transcendental self of the first critique has, in the Groundwork and the second Critique been developed into an independent being, whilst retaining transcendental character, that is able to act in both the sensible and intelligible worlds. The formal unity and identity of the first critique has been "fleshed out" into a substantial and comprehensive theory that incorporates both metaphysics and morals. However, whilst Kant has demonstrated an independence for the self at this point, it is in the Critique of Judgement that he takes the next step to demonstrate that such a being can only exist in a world of other similarly autonomous beings who share the characteristics of a common subjectivity in conjunction with the cognitive power of imagination.

If we are free we have to make real choices. But where do the choices come from and what is the power of the mind that permits us judge which choice is the right one. This is the starting point of the Critique of Judgement.

The fundamental question that drives the whole third Critique is: ‘How can a judgement be subjective but at the same time universal?’ Kant has come full circle here. In the Critique of Pure Reason he believed that he had laid to rest Hume’s scepticism by invoking the transcendental imagination to establish the existence synthetic a priori knowledge but now he sees that in accounting for the that imagination he is left with an irreducible subjective element.

The discussion of the third Critique is torturous and in many respects unsatisfactory. But the short version to the answer is that there must be an inner element that corresponds to the outer reality. The judgement that "such and such is beautiful" must have an inner element that is an aspect of the outer reality. There must be a noumenon within as well as external or objective noumena. But more over there must be what Kant refers to a sensus communis, or common sense that is shared by all rational and autonomous beings that gives the universality to the subjective nature of judgement.

There is a further intriguing storey to be told that leads to the conclusion that communicability is the ground rational, autonomous, imaginative beings but that is another story.

What has happened here is that Kant has come to the conclusion that reason, freedom and cognition require the subjective element of the rational imagination. And that this element rests on a common intersubjectivity. top

The Imagination and Higher Education

My contention is that higher education does not take account of the radical imagination, as discovered by Kant and Aristotle; and thus it fails to develop all, and indeed the most profound human capacities. It would be my further strong contention that higher education is strongly tending away from this direction at present towards a much more limited horizon.

The reasons for this need some exploration. First, the employment of the radical imagination is fairly tough going. The act of critical reflection is never easy. Secondly it is not conducive to the preferred social formations of advanced capitalism and economic rationalism.

To the first point, being reflective and critical requires a degree of self knowledge and self understanding the involves a double thought process. A "consciousness of consciousness", if one likes. In the case of judgement, it is both the act of judgement and reflections on the conditions of the judgement. Good managers, good teachers, good researchers do this. But there is another important step that Castoriadis, for one, thinks important, the critical-hermeneutic step of reflecting on our inner states in the process of judgement. In taking this step there is an act of the imagination involved in representing the self to consciousness. It is an existential moment, and at least slightly awkward to reflect on inner states in the judgement process. Without wishing to be too Freudian about it the process of achieving inner undistorted communication often involves an act of will that contains a self-critical component. The outcome is real self knowledge that is a form of transparency with regard to our motives and intentions.

Secondly current preferred social formations do not value or support the employment of the radical imagination; in fact they actively seek to suppress it. This can easily be seen in public life. Our politicians, business executives, deans and vice-chancellors are valued for their clear sightedness and decisiveness. Yet, if these characteristics are based on unreflective process, they represent a weakness rather than as a strength. They represent a dogmatic rather than a dialogic process and reflect a rigidity and narrow vision rather than the flexibility and creativity that their rhetoric usually reflects. Our late modern societies do not like to reflect upon their own contradictions. These are often glaring performative contradictions between policy and practice that most would prefer to slip by the attention of critical reflection. I think it is not going too far to say that there is an unconscious conspiracy.

The employment of the radical imagination largely does not support the formations of late capitalism, although there can be some interesting counter instances. For instance there are some radical imaginative elements in the virtual worlds of the new information and communications technology. But the self of the late flowing of the Protestant ethic is not a product of intersubjective critical reflection. It is a much more partial and narrow self. These formations of late capitalism find their manifestation in corporatism, economic rationalism and an isolationist individualism.

Some of this well captured by John Rawlston Saul in his widely read Unconscious Civilisation the Massey Lectures of 1995. 9

He opens the first lecture "The Great Leap Backwards’ with a quotation from John of Salisbury from 1159: "Who is more contemptible than he who scorns knowledge of himself." John of Salisbury unequivocally supports the proposition that a life worth living must be based on self-knowledge. These ideas, emanating from the Greeks, are a corner stone of Western culture, and are reflected in other cultures. They have been the guiding ideas behind the tradition of individualism, in the sense of valuing persons in their own right. They are also some of the ideas behind universities as cultural institutions. Self-knowledge and social knowledge are equally reflected in the institution of the universities.

Saul claims that the notion of the individual has been hijacked by the ideology of corporatism and the individual reduced to a narrow conformism in all the areas that matter such as basic commitments. And alternatively, supported and encouraged in all the areas that don’t, such as consumer choice between a narrow range of largely indistinguishable goods of dubious human benefit.

That cluster of ideas that we call corporatism and economic rationalism is at the heart of Saul’s "leap backwards". Right at the centre of his target is the discipline of economics and its succumbing to ideology. And it is ideology that it is at the core of Saul’s attack on corporatism. There is much to be said on corporatism and ideology. But it is to universities that I now want to turn briefly.

Universities have in many cases been quick to embrace the new corporatism. My own is amongst many which have openly embraced the new corporatism and unabashed, uses the full scale corporatist rhetoric. This view is not universally endorsed from within, although it seems to be gaining acceptance even by those on the "left".

The logical consequence of following this path is the loss of both legitimacy and place as culturally seminal institutions. The central reason is that the practice of the radical imaginary requires an actual freedom, or what Kant would have called autonomy of the will. The educative function of the full development of the human capacities through the cultivation of the radical imagination becomes replaced by institutions whose role is more narrowly seen to be to meet the existing needs and demands of the corporatist elites.

This is not to say that Universities should not be businesslike, responsive to individual and societal needs, nor accountable to their stakeholders. All of these recent developments are to be welcomed as positive changes to what have, at times, been rather unresponsive and aloof organisations. However, the adoption of the corporatist ideology strikes at their heart more than for any other enduring social institution. This is because their identity as autonomous social institutions with a creative and formative social role depends on the capacity to imagine the social and the individual as constituting an alternative or other being. Such a function is not, of course, the exclusive province of universities. The visual arts, writing, theology all have had and continue to have a creative, imaginary function. But universities through the cultivation of the liberal arts and sciences as critical enterprises depend on the purposeful creation of the conditions for the development of the radical imaginary. Without this dimension the key creative function of scholarship is curtailed.

Those out of sympathy with my position will point to my narrow nostalgia, my failure to recognise the realities of mass higher education etc. This is not the case. All of these I recognise, but claim that it is time for a reassertion of the radical imagination as the guiding idea for a renewal of our institutions of higher education. This is an ancient idea, but it is also a radical idea central to the re-humanisation of these institutions. In fact the development of mass higher education, in conjunction with new communications technologies provide new impetus and opportunity for an unprecedented era of creative assertion. This is not the possible when the unique character of the university as an autonomous social institution is subordinated to the ideology of the new corporatism. top

A Concluding Remark

One crucial aspect of the radical imagination of Aristotle and Kant is that it provides for the capacity to imagine the self as other. This is because the radical imagination determines that we are self-instituting beings. Following from Kant the self is not a given in reflection but in the creation of the imagination of autonomous reasoning beings in an intersubjectivity. If we do not comprehend this originatory principle of self consciousness we are doomed to see the other as alien or foreign. Without the radical imagination there is no capacity to see ourself as an other self. With this capacity there can be no freedom and no knowledge.

Footnotes

1 Castoriadis, Cornelius (1998), The World in Fragments, Ed., David Ames Curtis, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
2 Ibid., p.217. I have used throughout Castoriadis translation of the De Anima
3 Ibid.
4 Kant, Immanuel (1964), Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, Preface to First Edition, p. 7.
5 Ibid., p. 43.
6 Ibid., p. 68.
7 Ibid., p. 79.
8 Kant, Immanuel (1873), Critique of Practical Reason trans. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Macmillan, London, p. 88.
9 Saul, John Ralston (1995), Unconscious Civilisation, Penguin, Harmondsworth.

About the Author:

Dr. Gregory Heath
Department of School and Early Childhood Education
Faculty of Education, Language and Community Services
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University
PO Box 71, Bundoora
Victoria 3083
Australia

E-mail: [email protected]

Copyright © Greg Heath, 1999. For uses other than personal research or study, as permitted under the Copyright Laws of your country, permission must be negotiated with the author. Any further publication permitted by the author must include full acknowledgement of first publication in ultiBASE (http://ultibase.rmit.edu.au). Please contact the Editor of ultiBASE for assistance with acknowledgement ofsubsequent publication.