HN 409 - Creating the World: Theories of Imagination

(3.00 cr.)

Restricted to Honors students. Imagination has been variously conceived as a necessary aid to cognition (Aristotle), an "inferior kind of perceiving" (Berkeley), a "blind but indispensable function of the soul" (Kant), and "reason in its most exalted form" (Wordsworth). In this seminar, students investigate the history of the concept of imagination, with particular attention given to the philosophical significance of shifts in its characterization and its role in our contemporary self-understanding. Which kinds of human cognition are imaginative and in exactly what sense? How have our imaginative capacities been theorized in relation to reason and emotion? And, what roles do these capacities play in cognition, poetic practices, and moral agency? The very pursuit of answers to these questions requires intellectual imagination, as no single framework or method provides all of the resources needed to think expansively about the nature of the mind and its relationship to the world. Counts as an Honors humanities seminar. Closed to students in the Class of 2018 and beyond. Same course as PL 409 .