A Hidden Wisdom by Christina Van Dyke

Author:Christina Van Dyke [Van Dyke, Christina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192606167
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2022-09-21T00:00:00+00:00

4.1.2 Imagination

As we saw in Chapter 3, while sense appetite is linked primarily to the will, imagination is linked primarily to the intellect. Imagination’s main role is to allow reason to call up images (which can be visual, olfactory, auditory, etc.) which we’ve stored in our memories: it is “the power that helps us form mental images of anything present or absent.”21 Richard of St. Victor depicts imagination as busily bringing reason whatever information from the senses that it might require: “The imagination (insofar as she is a handmaid) runs between reason and sense. Whatever it imbibes from outside through the senses of the flesh, it represents inwardly for the service of reason.…Even when sense fails, imagination does not cease to provide. For when I am placed in darkness, I see nothing, but if I wish, I can imagine anything.”22 Imagination doesn’t require real-time sensory input—you’ve used it while reading this chapter already to picture a snuggly baby, for instance, and to remember the visceral frustration of a delayed flight.

Once we have those mental images in place, reason and imagination work together to isolate various components, to combine features of experiences in new and interesting ways, and to draw connections between them. Bonaventure uses this relation to explain why he includes a diagram in his Tree of Life. “Since imagination aids understanding, I have arranged in the form of an imaginary tree the few items I have collected among many,”23 he says. In the fourteenth-century English allegorical poem Piers Plowman, the character of ‘Ymaginatif’ plays an important role in helping the central character (significantly named ‘Will’) negotiate the path between the physical world and God.24 The ultimate end of imagination is helping the intellect gain knowledge of abstract, universal truths: “Imagination participates centrally in the process by which anything is understood in its fullness.”25 When we’ve experienced enough different sorts of meowing furry four-footed animals, for instance, and pondered the commonalities and differences between them, we can form the concept ‘cat’—a concept that is then modified, corrected, and strengthened by further experiences in the material world and further work by imagination and reason.

Imagination doesn’t just aid reason in forming concepts and discovering truths in the world around us, however. It also plays a crucial role in our moral and spiritual formation. If sense appetite can lead us astray with the immediate pull of objects in front of us, imagination can lead us astray not just with images of those same objects later but also with creative and new combinations of images. We might see an appealing but expensive espresso-maker in a store, for instance, and walk away from it, only to find ourselves later imagining it smartening up our kitchen counter while we happily pull espresso shots for friends and family, getting more and better work done because of the excellent quality of the caffeine we’re drinking. One click later on their website and we’ve bought an expensive appliance we don’t really need. Fortunately, we can also use imagination to

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