Thinking Through the Imagination: Aesthetics in Human Cognition

American Philosophy

by John Kaag

Use your imagination! The demand is as important as it is confusing. What is the imagination? What is its value? Where does it come from? And where is it going in a time when even the obscene mseems overdone and passé?This book takes up these questions and argues for the centrality of imagination in humanmcognition. It traces the development of the imagination in Kant’s critical philosophy (particularly the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment) and claims that the insights of Kantian aesthetic theory, especially concerning the nature of creativity, common sense, and genius, influenced the development of nineteenth-century American philosophy.The book identifies the central role of the imagination in the philosophy of Peirce, a role often overlooked in analytic treatments of his thought. The final chapters pursue the observation made by Kant and Peirce that imaginative genius is a type of natural gift (ingenium) and must in some way be continuous with the creative force of nature. It makes this final turn by way of contemporary studies of metaphor, embodied cognition, and cognitive neuroscience.

Genres: Philosophy

267 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 1, 2013

About the author

John Kaag is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and author of American Philosophy: A Love Story. It is a story of lost library, a lost American intellectual tradition and a lost person--and their simultaneous recovery.

Kaag is a dispirited young philosopher at sea in his marriage and his career when he stumbles upon West Wind, a ruin of an estate in the hinterlands of New Hampshire that belonged to the eminent Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking. Hocking was one of the last true giants of American philosophy and a direct intellectual descendent of William James, the father of American philosophy and psychology, with whom Kaag feels a deep kinship. It is James’s question “Is life worth living?” that guides this remarkable book.

The books Kaag discovers in the Hocking library are crawling with insects and full of mold. But he resolves to restore them, as he immediately recognizes their importance. Not only does the library at West Wind contain handwritten notes from Whitman and inscriptions from Frost, but there are startlingly rare first editions of Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant. As Kaag begins to catalog and read through these priceless volumes, he embarks on a thrilling journey that leads him to the life-affirming tenets of American philosophy―self-reliance, pragmatism, and transcendence―and to a brilliant young Kantian who joins him in the restoration of the Hocking books.

Part intellectual history, part memoir, American Philosophy is ultimately about love, freedom, and the role that wisdom can play in turning one’s life around.

John lives with his daughter, Becca, and partner, Carol, outside of Boston.

Reviews

[Seth · Rating 5 out of 5]

German idealism (Kant's Third Critique and Schiller), American pragmatism (C.S. Peirce) , and empirical science (evolutionary naturalism and cognitive neuroscience) come together to promote the primary and mediating function of the imagination in both human cognition and ontology. More than this, Kaag's book draws continuity in Peirce's corpus, where others see two Peirces, and Kaag's book picks up the Peircean project of investigating the productive and receptive powers of the imagination without the shortcomings of faculty psychology and with the help of contemporary science. There is a triadic logic to our thinking, and there is quite possibly a triadic logic of nature. With gardening as its metaphoric trope, the book is well-written and digestible even to those not in the habit of reading about cognitive linguistics or neuroscience.