Vaizduotė ir filosofijos ištakos
Authors: Kardelis Naglis 
Published: December 2024

The author of the article examines some aspects of the role of imagination in the beginnings of Western philosophy. Starting from the distinction between the imaginative
and the self-evident, he turns his attention to the dialectical interplay between these
two poles of philosophical thinking, bringing to the fore the similarity between the
Lithuanian word for imagination, vaizduotė, and that for the self-evident, akivaizdybė,
the similarity that is very relevant here and of much importance to all consequent
analysis: on the one hand, philosophy seeks for the self-evident and is ultimately
based on what is self-evident, yet in order to proceed further, it needs a powerful and
fertile imagination which could present to the mind’s eye all logical possibilities and
viable alternatives that might be taken into account in the process of philosophical
quest for truth and value.
After this starting point, a second distinction is made – that between visual (imaginative, figurative, analogical) thinking and discursive (analytical, logical) thinking. Some
examples from the philosophy of Heraclitus and Plato are presented in order to show
that the first Western philosophers, the ancient Greeks, were already fully aware
both of the dangers and creative possibilities inherent in the workings of human imagination. The author, discussing the specificity of the workings of visual (imaginative) thinking, examines in this context the semantical affinity of such Lithuanian
words (based on the same root) as vaizdas (“view, image”), atvaizdas (“image, icon”),
pavyzdys (“example, simile, paradigm”), provaizdis (“model, paradigm”), vaizduotė
(“imagination, fantasy”), akivaizdybė (“the self-evident”), and so on. He also draws attention to the semantic relation between two Greek words, phainomenon (“phenomenon”) and phantasia (“fantasy”), both sharing the same root with the Greek word phōs
(“light”). The author also turns attention to the fact that the philosophical analysis of
the difference between the workings of phantasia (fantasy, fantastical imagination
aiming at sheer simulation) and those of eikasia (essentially mimetic imagination that
aims at truthful representation) is first encountered already in Plato’s Sophist. Plato’s
analysis of that difference has never lost its relevance. The semantic relation between
eikasia (essentially truthful mimetic imagination) and eikōn (icon, iconic image) is
also mentioned. It is shown that this relation is conceptually similar to and culturally
reminiscent of the relation between Latin words imaginatio (imagination) and imago
(image). It is argued that the power of imagination is, so to speak, passively active
and therefore may be viewed as situated somewhere between the active power of
philosophical theōria (and all waking states of consciousness in general) and the passivity of dreaming (and all dreamlike states of consciousness in general). The point
is made that imagination, sharing in both the spontaneity characteristic of dreaming
and dreamlike states of consciousness, on the one hand, and the mental discipline
characteristic of waking states, especially philosophical theōria itself, on the other
hand, is very conducive to creativity in general and, consequently, to philosophical
creativity in particular.
The role of imagination in the process of cognition and knowledge acquisition is also
briefly mentioned. In this context the Stoic notion of cataleptic fantasy, or cataleptic imagination (katalēptikē phantasia) is brought to the fore, as well as a somewhat
conceptually related term of Medieval (especially Thomistic) epistemology, namely,
reversio (or conversio) ad phantasmata. The Thomistic understanding of knowledge
acquisition by way of abstraction (which involves mind’s reversio ad phantasmata)
is contrasted with Augustinian understanding of the knowledge acquisition process
based on the notion of illumination. The role of imagination in the works of Neoplatonists is also very briefly mentioned.