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Logic of Imagination: The Expanse of the Elemental

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The Shakespearean image of a tempest and its aftermath forms the beginning as well as a major guiding thread of Logic of Imagination. Moving beyond the horizons of his earlier work, Force of Imagination, John Sallis sets out to unsettle the traditional conception of logic, to mark its limits, and, beyond these limits, to launch another, exorbitant logic-a logic of imagination. Drawing on a vast range of sources, including Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud, as well as developments in modern logic and modern mathematics, Sallis shows how a logic of imagination can disclose the most elemental dimensions of nature and of human existence and how, through dialogue with contemporary astrophysics, it can reopen the project of a philosophical cosmology.

302 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

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About the author

John Sallis

102 books7 followers
John Sallis was an American philosopher well known for his work in the tradition of phenomenology. From 2005 until his death, he was the Frederick J. Adelmann Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. He previously taught at Pennsylvania State University (1996–2005), Vanderbilt University (1990–1995), Loyola University of Chicago (1983–1990), Duquesne University (1966–1983) and the University of the South (1964–1966).

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Profile Image for Larry.
225 reviews26 followers
August 29, 2023
#Didntfinish. Starts very promisingly, but gets sidetracked by two contradictory tendencies: one to come off as serious and grounded in math and stuff (logic, the intro to math infinities), the other to also present a very poetic conception of the “elemental” (as some kind of gathering of chthonian forces made possible by imagination qua capacity of holding opposites together). The result is a hybrid book with no discernible thesis, and that most importantly doesn’t really put forward the logic of imagination we were expecting from the title. The only indication in this direction is the imagined things are no “things” (but elementals), and so they require an “exorbitant” logic, ie one that doesn’t follow the principle of non contradiction. I call that hand waving. I do like the idea that, when one imagines something unreal (a unicorn), one has to sustain the imagining by some kind of effort (didn’t Descartes define imagination as “une contention de l’esprit”?), because there is no real support for the imagining, but then, and it’s a recurrent problem in this book, this idea of unmediated re-presentation (Vergegenwärtigung) is a deeply rooted Husserlian idea (phantasia), and whoever read some phenomenology in the text, and knows his Husserl by the book, can’t be too shook by this, and most of the poetic/phenomenological “descriptions” Sallis is giving us here

Oh and in a footnote towards the end, he says he doesn’t understand why the other in Levinas has to be human. I agree. I don’t see why either.
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