Force of Imagination
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Description

A bold and original investigation into how imagination shapes thought and feeling.


Force of Imagination
The Sense of the Elemental
John Sallis

A bold and original investigation into how imagination shapes thought and feeling.

"This is a bold new direction for the author, one that he takes in an arresting and convincing manner. . . . a powerful, original approach to what others call 'ecology' but what Sallis shows to be a question of the status of the earth in philosophical thinking at this historical moment." —Edward S. Casey

In this major original work, John Sallis probes the very nature of imagination and reveals how the force of imagination extends into all spheres of human life. While drawing critically on the entire history of philosophy, Sallis's work takes up a vantage point determined by the contemporary deconstruction of the classical opposition between sensible and intelligible. Thus, in reinterrogating the nature of imagination, Force of Imagination carries out a radical turn to the sensible and to the elemental in nature. Liberated from subjectivity, imagination is shown to play a decisive role both in drawing together the moments of our experience of sensible things and in opening experience to the encompassing light, atmosphere, earth, and sky. Set within this elemental expanse, the human sense of time, of self, and of the other proves to be inextricably linked to imagination and to nature. By showing how imagination is formative for the very opening upon things and elements, this work points to the revealing power of poetic imagination and casts a new light on the nature of art.

John Sallis is Liberal Arts Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. His previous books include Being and Logos: Reading the Platonic Dialogues; Shades—Of Painting at the Limit; Stone; Chorology: On Beginning in Plato's Timaeus (all published by Indiana University Press), Crossings: Nietzsche and the Space of Tragedy and Double Truth.

Studies in Continental Thought—John Sallis, editor

Contents
Prolusions
On (Not Simply) Beginning
Remembrance
Duplicity of the Image
Spacing the Image
Tractive Imagination
The Elemental
Temporalities
Proprieties
Poetic Imagination


Preliminary Table of Contents:

Prolusions
1. On (Not Simply) Beginning
2. Remembrance
3. Duplicity of the Image
4. Spacing the Image
5. Tractive Imagination
6. The Elemental
7. Temporalities
8. Proprieties
9. Poetic Imagination

Sujets

Informations

Publié par
Date de parution 22 septembre 2000
Nombre de lectures 0
EAN13 9780253028228
Langue English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

FORCE OF IMAGINATION
 
 
 
 
 
S TUDIES IN C ONTINENTAL T HOUGHT
J OHN S ALLIS , G ENERAL E DITOR
C ONSULTING E DITORS
 
R OBERT B ERNASCONI J. N. M OHANTY R UDOLPH B ERNET M ARY R AWLINSON J OHN D. C APUTO T OM R OCKMORE D AVID C ARR C ALVIN O. S CHRAG E DWARD S. C ASEY †R EINER S CHÜRMANN H UBERT D REYFUS C HARLES E. S COTT D ON I HDE T HOMAS S HEEHAN D AVID F ARRELL K RELL R OBERT S OKOLOWSKI L ENORE L ANGSDORF B RUCE W. W ILSHIRE A LPHONSO L INGIS D AVID W OOD W ILLIAM L. M C B RIDE
FORCE OF IMAGINATION
The Sense of the Elemental
John Sallis
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS       BLOOMINGTON AND INDIANAPOLIS
T HIS BOOK IS A PUBLICATION OF
I NDIANA U NIVERSITY P RESS
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© 2000 BY J OHN S ALLIS
A LL RIGHTS RESERVED
N O PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED OR UTILIZED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL, INCLUDING PHOTOCOPYING AND RECORDING, OR BY ANY INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER. T HE A SSOCIATION OF A MERICAN U NIVERSITY P RESSE’ R ESOLUTION ON P ERMISSIONS CONSTITUTES THE ONLY EXCEPTION TO THIS PROHIBITION.
T HE PAPER USED IN THIS PUBLICATION MEETS THE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF A MERICAN N ATIONAL S TANDARD FOR I NFORMATION S CIENCES — P ERMANENCE OF P APER FOR P RINTED L IBRARY M ATERIALS , ANSI Z39.48-1984.
M ANUFACTURED IN THE U NITED S TATES OF A MERICA
L IBRARY OF C ONGRESS C ATALOGING-IN- P UBLICATION D ATA
S ALLIS , J OHN, DATE
F ORCE OF IMAGINATION : THE SENSE OF THE ELEMENTAL /J OHN S ALLIS .
P.      CM. — (S TUDIES IN C ONTINENTAL THOUGHT )
I NCLUDES BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES AND INDEX .
ISBN 0-253-33772-0 ( CLOTH : ALK. PAPER ) — ISBN 0-253-21403-3 ( PBK.: ALK. PAPER )
1. I MAGINATION (P HILOSOPHY ) I. T ITLE . II. S ERIES .
BH301.153 S25 2000
128′.3 — DC21
00-027604
1    2    3    4    5        05    04    03    02    01    00
T O J ERRY
AGAIN, AND ALWAYS
...das einzige, wodurch wir fähig sind, auch das Widersprechende zu denken, und zusammenzufassen,—die Einbildungskraft.
F. W. J. S CHELLING , System des transzendentalen Idealismus
The Imagination is not a State: it is the Human Existence itself.
W ILLIAM B LAKE , Milton
In every landscape the point of astonishment is the meeting of the sky and the earth....
—R ALPH W ALDO E MERSON , “Nature”
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PROLUSIONS
I. ECHOING —
II. BEING THERE —
III. SPIRALING —
IV. REPEATING HERE AFTER —
V. TURNING —
1. ON (NOT SIMPLY) BEGINNING
A. SENSE
B. IDIOM
2. REMEMBRANCE
A. IMAGINATION AT THE LIMIT
B. THE NAMES OF IMAGINATION
C. EXORBITANT TRAITS
3. DUPLICITY OF THE IMAGE
A. SENSE IMAGE
B. INDIFFERENCE
4. SPACING THE IMAGE
A. THE PROVOCATION OF SPEECH
B. HORIZONALITY
C. SHINING
5. TRACTIVE IMAGINATION
A. THE CONFIGURATION OF SHOWING
B. FORCE
C. IMAGINATION
6. THE ELEMENTAL
A. ELEMENTAL NATURE
B. NATURE AND TRAGEDY
C. ELEMENTAL IMAGINATION
D. EARTH AND SKY
7. TEMPORALITIES
A. MANIFESTIVE TIME
B. POLYTOPICAL TIME
8. PROPRIETIES
A. FROM WATCH TO ACTION
B. PROPRIETARY MANIFESTATION
9. POETIC IMAGINATION
A. REDRAFT
B. ARTS OF IMAGINATION
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is as if this book has always been already under way, never simply begun. Even if measured from the datings of the earliest sketches, its genesis has been protracted, drawn out quite beyond what was envisaged. The book has required, in several senses—including that to which Nietzsche alludes in the Preface to The Dawn —slow writing.
The earliest sketches go back to a time, just after the completion of Being and Logos , when a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung afforded me the leisure needed for such a project to begin to take shape. A very preliminary draft was composed during a stay in Paris in the early 1980s, made possible by support from the American Council of Learned Societies. I continued developing and reshaping the project as I worked, simultaneously, on several other, more textually oriented studies ( Delimitations, Spacings, Echoes, Crossings ); these, as well as my other, later books, have left indelible traces in the present discourse. A more definitive draft of the initial chapters was composed during stays in Brussels and in Bochum, again with generous support from the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. The final draft was written in Boalsburg in the years 1996–99. Very able assistance with production was provided by Nancy Fedrow and Robert Metcalf, to whom I am grateful. I am grateful also to my editor and friend Janet Rabinowitch for her generous efforts in behalf of this book.
Because of the complex genesis of this project, I have ventured only a few presentations directly related to it: my inaugural lectures at Loyola University of Chicago, Vanderbilt University, and The Pennsylvania State University, respectively; a research session at the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in 1994; and, as the book came to completion, papers entitled “Monstrous Imagination” and “The Elemental Earth” presented to the British Society for Phenomenology and the International Association for Environmental Philosophy, respectively.
It goes perhaps without saying that much of what was eventually drawn into this discourse was first sketched on singular occasions in places distinctively evocative: a deep Alpine valley, certain islands in the Aegean, the scene of a snowstorm in Pennsylvania, the sun-baked summer landscape of Umbria, the mountains around Soglio and Sils Maria, the canyons and desert of Utah, the sites of the temples at Sounion and at Agregento. On certain occasions in such places there comes an appeal that enlivens imagination and attests to the elemental.
BOALSBURG
JANUARY 2000
FORCE OF IMAGINATION
PROLUSIONS
I. ECHOING—
Imagine being there.
Imagine both sensing and sensed. Imagine them together. Enact the sensing imaginally with such force as to bring forth what would—if it were an instance of sensing and not of imagining—be sensed, what would be sensed while also, decisively, exceeding sense.
Let each sense share in what is wondrous and monstrous there. Yoking each to what would be sensed, double this double across the entire range of human sensibility. And beyond.
Imagine, then, being there, listening in silence as the swift mountain stream bursts and raves over the rocks. Imagine being there in the valley over whose pines, crags, and caverns the fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams sail. Imagine hearing the chainless winds as they come to drink the odors of the giant brood of pines and to hear the old and solemn harmony of their mighty swinging. Imagine then training one’s eyes on the towering summit as it rises above what cannot but seem the scene of some ancient devastation, now strewn with unearthly forms of ice and rock. Imagine being there where its lofty peak commands every view, opening one’s vision to its remoteness and serenity, feeling the intensity of the sun’s rays and at the same time the coolness of the mountain air, sensing with—and beyond—all one’s senses the elemental conflict between fire and ice that rages there on high.
One could, then, perhaps also imagine having heard the song before hearing it sung to the words to which the poet set it. It is a song of the mountains, a song that celebrates what the primaeval mountains announce, their teaching.
The song was written in the valley of Chamonix in 1816. Shelley gave it the name of the mountain of which it sings: Mont Blanc . 1 Yet the poet’s design is not just to sing of the mountain but to let the song of the mountain itself and of all that is gathered around it sound forth in the poetic song. The poet would echo a wild sound, like that of the roaring stream, itself echoing in the caverns of the ravine—
A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame[.]
(l. 20)
Attentive, yet
... as in a trance sublime and strange[,]
(l. 35)
letting be called into play his
... own separate fantasy,
(l. 36)
the poet would put into song what arises from the darkness of the ravine:
One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings
Now float above thy darkness, and now rest
Where that or thou art no unbidden guest,
In the still cave of the witch Poesy—
(ll. 41–44)
The poet offers his song as an echo of what he has heard sung in the mysterious tongue of the mountain wilderness. For, indeed,
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue[.]
(l. 76)
The mountain has its voice, though not all have ears with which to hear it:
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.
(ll. 80–83)
Of what does the mountain sing? It sings of all living things and of itself. Echoed in the poem, its song proclaims:
All things that move and breathe with toil and sound
Are born and die; revolve, subside, and swell.
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity,
Remote, serene, and inaccessible:
And this , the naked countenance of earth,
On which I gaze, even these primaeval mountains
Teach the adverting mind.
(ll. 94–100)
The song of the mountain conveys a teaching. It is a teaching concerning the power of the earth, the secret strength of things, and the force of imagination.
When the silent and solitary earth displays its naked countenance towering into the heaven,
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,
(l. 60)
the silence is in a sense—to a certain kind of sense—broken and the solitude breached. Then the earth’s remoteness and power become all the more manifest, displayed precisely there in the towering peak. The power is not just that supposed once to have lifted earth itself into the heaven, once long ago, in a past so remote that, if one asks about it,
None can reply—all seems etern

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