ABSTRACT
René Descartes (1596-1650) has rarely been regarded as a major philosopher of imagination. One reason is that the writings in which imagination featured most centrally were published either just before his death or posthumously; they had little effect on how Descartes was interpreted. Other reasons have more to do with us than with him: it seems improbable to us that imagination can figure large in modern rationalism, and the now century-old tradition of antipsychologism in professional philosophy and psychology makes it seem unlikely we can learn much from old-fashioned philosophical psychology. It is one thing to claim we should reassess Descartes’s conception of imagination; it is quite
another to argue (as this essay does) that he transformed the theory and the function of imagination in Western culture. This transformation happened because of his practice of imagining in mathematics and science. Descartes’s imagination was revolutionary despite its being neglected ad litteram, because it was intrinsic to the physicomathematical theorizing he initiated and that following centuries emulated with passion. Descartes thus stands, with figures like Aristotle and Kant, as one of a handful of Western thinkers who have philosophized about imagination in a way that profoundly shaped the future, and very nearly unique in combining such philosophizing with a new imaginative practice.
