Kaag - Thinking Through the Imagination

THINKING THROUGH THE IMAGINATION

AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY

Douglas R. Anderson and Jude Jones, series editors

Copyright 2014 Fordham University Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kaag, John J., 1979

Thinking through the imagination : aesthetics in human cognition / John Kaag. First edition.

pages cm (American philosophy)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8232-5493-4 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Imagination (Philosophy) 2. Aesthetics. 3. Cognition. 4. Kant, Immanuel, 17241804. 5. Schiller, Friedrich, 17591805. 6. Peirce, Charles S. (Charles Sanders), 18391914. I. Title.

BH301.I53K33 2014

111'.85dc23

2013006701

Printed in the United States of America

16 15 14 5 4 3 2 1

First edition

Contents

L ike most people, I became acquainted with the imagination at a rather early age. In my case, the meeting took place as a child in my mothers backyard garden. My mother ensured that my contact with the imagination would not be a passing acquaintance. She taught her children to acknowledge and actualize the possibilities that life affords even, and perhaps especially, when they were not readily apparent. This was an especially useful lesson for a not-so-young child who hoped to go into the discipline of philosophy, a field that looks a bit barren at first glance. To the extent that this book is a function of my education as a philosopher, and to the extent that my mother and brother urged me to acquire this education, I have them to thank for the writing of this book.

I began this project under the guidance of Douglas Anderson, who, as my mentor and friend at Penn State, encouraged me to roam freely over a variety of academic fields and to focus carefully when the roaming became listless. Mark Johnson, Scott Pratt, and John Lysaker helped me remember that this careful focus on analysis and argumentation could be the stuff of imagination and meaning. This is to say that they were ideal graduate professors. Much that is correct or beautiful about this book I owe to their guidance and willingness to converse; the mistakes and boring bits are, of course, my own. I would like to thank a number of other peers and colleagues who have helped me give shape to this book: Frank Oppenheim, Robert Innis, John McDermott, Joseph Margolis, Erin McKenna, Mat Foust, Kim Garchar, Jeff Downard, Michael Raposa, Roger Ward, and Rob Main. Dawn Abergs help in proofing and editing the first draft of the volume was extremely helpful. I thank Rogers Hollingsworth and Gerald Edelman for encouraging me at a crucial point in the development of the manuscript, on a spring afternoon when I was very much inclined to draw this analysis of the imagination up short. Much of this research was supported by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Harvard Humanities Center; I thank Patricia Meyer Spacks and David Sehat for their invaluable encouragement and criticism over the course of the research and writing.

Finally, there is a person who does not fall neatly into the category of peer, or friend, or mentor, or supporter, or critic, or family member. Carol Hay plays all of these rolesseamlessly, creatively, joyfully. No other person has done more in helping me think through the imagination, through its risks and potentialities.

THINKING THROUGH THE IMAGINATION

ONE

It is not by dealing out cold justice to the circle of my ideas that I can make them grow, but by cherishing them and tending them as I would flowers in my garden.

Charles Sanders Peirce (1893)

The Imaginative Imperative

For the two children, the season began as a wild dasha race against the length of summer days. But by mid-August, the days proved too long and hot for their short attention spans. The unconstrained freedom of vacation exhausted itself or, more accurately and more ironically, exposed itself as a type of aimless discontent. Freedom from chores, school, and responsibility revealed itself as boredom to me and my brother on a humid afternoon. The toys and blocks that had once riveted our attention lay thrown and neglected about the playroom. Haphazardly discarded games no longer occupied our full attention. Surrounded by a chaos of playthings, my brother and I sat bickering in the middle of the room. At least bickering gave us something to do .

My mother had been listening to us for some time from the garden. The injunction that came to us through the back window was as simple as it was emphatic:

Boys! Stop Squabbling! Be Imaginative!

Being imaginative is no simple matter for two tired youngsters. More often than not, we needed a bit of encouragement. My brother and I had contented ourselves with our discontent, objecting to any force that might jostle us out of the odd comfort of bickering. Encouragement came in the form of an order. Get up off the ground, pick up our blocks and games, and come outside to help in the garden.

If being imaginative meant helping in the garden, my brother and I wanted no part in it. How could imagination play freely if it was forced to help with mundane chores? Gardening, however, if done properly, is an engaging activity, and our reluctance was short-lived. It is, after all, difficult to be reluctantly imaginative. Planting a bed is a type of play that rarely grows old. After a short tutorial in gardening etiquette, my mother set us free on a small plot. We were, however, not wholly free, at least not in the negative sense of being free from school or free from chores. This gardening may have been free play, but it was also serious business that deserved our full attention. In being imaginative, my brother and I came to understand the rules of play, the guidelines that determined the arrangement of shrubs and hosta, as they emerged unexpectedly in the interaction with a variety of plants and in a particular garden. This variety was not embodied in the random scattering of discarded toys or blocks but rather in the gathering together of various plants into the felt harmony of a well-planted garden. Even youngsters can learn that such a novel but harmonious gathering is the meaning of being imaginative. I had not yet read John Deweys Art as Experience , of course. But I did in a certain intuitive way understand that

the imagination is a way of seeing and feeling things as they compose an integral whole. It is the large and general blending of interests at the point where the mind comes in contact with the world. When old and familiar things are made new in experience there is imagination.

The free play of growth and cultivation is a process that involves a child even against his will. Being imaginative means getting your hands dirty. Really dirty. After a stint in the yard, my mother would joke that it was difficult to see where the dirt ended and the skin began. In truth, such distinctionsbetween the human and the naturalare difficult to make in the midst of imaginative planting. It is here that we get at least a vague sense of the issues that will emerge over the course of this relatively thin book. In its everyday use, the imagination is understood as a creative powerperhaps the creative powerby which human beings get on with the meaningful business of living. It is the imagination that allows us to escape the mediocrity of our daily lives, to transcend the self-imposed boundariesconceptual, personal, and socialthat limit our growth. It is the imagination that generates a work of art, and it is the imagination that grants us the ability to interpret artworks. It is the imagination that keeps culture and science on the move. In short, it is the imagination that makes us fully human.