phantasia
(φαντασια)
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| (Language: Greek) |
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| Short Description: |
imagination |
| Long Description: |
imagination; for Plato, phantasia belongs to the realm of appearance and illusion; for Aristotle, phantasia is neither perception nor judgment but a distinct capacity of the soul, the capacity which respond to appearances derived from memory, dreams and sense-perception; the II century A.D. sophist Philostratus was the first to call the faculty of producing visual images phantasia which is contrasted with mimesis: ‘For mimesis will produce only what she has seen, but phantasia even what she has not seen as well; and she will produce it by referring to the standard of the perfect reality’ ( Life of Apollonius 6.19); the Neoplatonists lack the concept of creative imagination, though the Neoplatonic phantasia can reproduce images of higher principles in mathematics and language, therefore phantasia, as a mirror, is placed at the junction of two differnt levels of being: the miror of imagination not only reflects images of phenomena but also images of the noetic Forms, Ideas, thus translating revelations and divine epiphanies into the visible icons and symbols of the higher realities; at he junction of phantasia (which is identified with nous pathetikos by Proclus) rational and irrational meet; the objects of phantasia are tupos (imprint), schema (figure) and morphe (shape). |
| Example(s): |
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| Source(s): |
The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Platonic and Pythagorean Philosophy, by Dr. Algis Uždavinys |
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