STRUMENTI PER LA DIDATTICA E LA RICERCA – 86 – Paolo Fabiani The Philosophy of the Imagination in Vico and Malebranche Translated and Edited by Giorgio Pinton Firenze University Press 2009 the philosophy of the imagination in Vico and male- branche / paolo Fabiani. – Firenze : Firenze university press, 2009. (strumenti per la didattica e la ricerca ; 86) http://digital.casalini.it/97864530680 isBn 978-88-6453-066-6 (print) isBn 978-88-6453-068-0 (online) immagine di copertina: © elenaray | dreamstime.com progetto grafico di alberto pizarro Fernández © 2009 Firenze university press università degli studi di Firenze Firenze university press Borgo albizi, 28, 50122 Firenze, italy http://www.fupress.com/ Printed in Italy “In memory of my mother ... to honor the courage of my father” Paolo Fabiani “This is more than my book, it also represents Giorgio Pinton’s interpretation of the imagi- nation in early modern philosophy. In several places of my work he felt obliged to simplify the arguments to easy the reading; he did it in agreement with me. In a few others, he substituted, with intelligence and without forcing, the structure of the original academic version in a differ- ent narrative organization of the contents. He has done a great job. It is an honor for me that the most important translator of Vico’s Latin Works into Eng- lish translated and edited my first philosophical essay. I heartly thank Giorgio Pinton, a true master of philosophy; Alexander Bertland, a very good scholar in Vico studies; and the editorial staff of FUP, expecially Patrizia Cotoneschi and Fulvio Guatelli” Paolo Fabiani Paolo Fabiani, The Philosophy of the Imagination in Vico and Malebranche, ISBN 978-88-6453-066-6 (print) ISBN 978-88-6453-068-0 (online) © 2009 Firenze University Press CONTENTS TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE by Giorgio Pinton 9 INTRODUCTION by Alexander Bertland 13 GLOSSARY 22 PROEMIUM 23 PART ONE THE FIRST KIND OF IMAGINATION: FROM ERROR TO THE BIRTH OF THOUGHT ONE The Rules for the Avoidance of Errors 31 TWO The Third Primitive Notion and the Human Fall 37 THREE The Human Fall and the Pagan Mentality 43 FOUR Aristotelianism: The Logical Sublimation of the Pagan Mentality 47 FIVE The Scientific Foundations of Vico’s Psychology 51 SIX The Most Dangerous Error of the Ancients 67 SEVEN The Birth of Thought 83 EIGHT The Metaphorical Nature of Thought 111 PART TWO THE FIRST AND SECOND KIND OF IMAGINATION THE SENSES AND THE INTELLECT NINE The Intelligible Extension: The Idea of Death and of Idolatry 129 TEN The Origin of Idolatry 137 ELEVEN Psychology and Psycho-Linguistics of Paganity 161 TWELVE Sensitivity and Intellect 193 THIRTEEN The Familiar Ideas and Mentality 207 FOURTEEN Verisimilarity and Imagination 215 Paolo Fabiani, The Philosophy of the Imagination in Vico and Malebranche, ISBN 978-88-6453-066-6 (print) ISBN 978-88-6453-068-0 (online) © 2009 Firenze University Press 8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE IMAGINATION PART THREE THE SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE IMAGINATION FIFTEEN The Function of the Imagination and of Imitation in Society 233 SIXTEEN The Organicistic Conception of Society 245 SEVENTEEN The Nature of Social Interrelations 253 EIGHTEEN The Communicative Power of the Strong Images 271 NINETEEN The Heroic Mentality 283 TWENTY The Heroes of the Imagination 293 TWENTY-ONE The Power of Imagination and Superstition 305 TWENTY-TWO The Conceit of the Learned and The Problem of Knowledge 313 TWENTY-THREE Passions and Imagination: The Power of Wonder 319 TWENTY-FOUR The Universals of the Imagination 331 NOTES 349 BIBLIOGRAPHY 413 TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE In 1501, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola wrote about imagination. In 1898, Luigi Ambrosini published a history of philosophy focusing on what through the ages philosophers said about the imagination and its psychological functions. In the same year, the American Journal of Psychology published G. V. Dearborn’s study of imagination. Jean Paul Sartre’s works on l’imagination appeared in 1936 and on l’imaginaire in 1940. In 1951, Wallace Stevens called the imagination “the necessary angel.” Jean Piaget analysed mental imagery in children, in 1966. Jacob Bronoski narrated the origin of knowledge and imagination in 1978. Donald Phillip Verene, during the 1981, spoke of imagination as a science in Vico, while Ned Block edited essays on imagery, and Dietmar Kamper offered a history of Einbildungkraft. In 2001, Manuela Sanna wrote La fantasia, ch’è l’occhio dell’ingegno (Fantasy, the eye of the Intellect), and since then she and Monica Riccio have been giving seminars on “perception between sensation and imagination” at the Institute for the History of Modern Philosophical and Scientific Thought (ISPF). In the last two decades of the twenty century, indeed, Centers and Institutes of Learning have studied im- agery and mental representations, under a variety of perspectives and in several different fields of research. Already before 1914, Alexander F. Chamberlain said that the twentieth century was the age of the idea and the intellect, while the twen- ty-first century was going to be the age of images and sensations. All learning and discovery has become representative, graphically expressible, and instantaneously communicable. Though both Malebranche (1638–1715) and Vico (1668–1744) died by the first half of the Eighteenth century, they came to be better known by the end of the Twentieth one. They spoke about imagination in their most important works: La recherche de la vérité (1674, 1675) and La Scienza Nuova (1730, 1744). Fabiani shows how the ventennio of Vico’s studies of human nature and the discovery of the master key of the new science had a constant point of reference in the psy- chology and anthropology of the Cartesian perspectives of Malebranche. But, while Malebranche tells modern human beings to find in the Eternally Divine and Human Being the One Who proclaims “I am the Truth,” freedom from erro- neousness, Vico instead tells them to embrace the poetic wisdom that sees beyond the historical paganist event the primitiveness of a recourse and the surprise of a coming rebirth of cultures. While one speaks of the mystifying power of religious Paolo Fabiani, The Philosophy of the Imagination in Vico and Malebranche, ISBN 978-88-6453-066-6 (print) ISBN 978-88-6453-068-0 (online) © 2009 Firenze University Press 10 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE IMAGINATION images, the other claims the sole historicizing poetical force of our human creative action. With this work, Fabiani has established several principles that regulate im- ages and imagination and has indicated the passage from the modern to the post- modern era in our conceptions of these two notions. The book deals with human nature per se and assumes that in human beings human nature suffers paganity, which is the natural propensity for error. Pagan mentality is the manifestation of an erroneous conscience in human beings. The hidden message of the work of Fabiani is that the Post-modern world is a pagan world. Pagan, as he suggests, means irrational. The Post-modern Irrationalism originated from the triumph of the corporeal over the mental reality. The supremacy of the visible, the oppres- siveness of the audible, the attractiveness of the tasteful, and the fascination of scent and corporeity are the contemporary jailers of Post-modern human beings. This book speaks of the true Post-modern Irrationality, Irreligiousness, Violence, Solipsism, and destructive Voluntarism, all based on contemporary Instinctiveness and Immediateness. It shows that the present digital generations have truly disre- garded the civilizing principles taught during the early modern courses of Western Civilization. Emanuel L. Paparella said, “There are two dangerous extremes in modern Western philosophy: that of mythos without logos leading to a false tran- scendence and ushering in the Nietzschean charismatic Man; and that of logos without mythos leading to pure rationalism and ushering in technocratic Man. In between those dangerous extremes there is Vico’s poetic philosophy, humanistic, holistic and able to harmonize the two extreme.” An abundant meaningness exists in the fascinating narration of Fabiani, who in the descriptions of the origin through imagination of language and thought lets it known that there is a condi- tion that comes before we have proper language, and let it possible a multiplicity of representations, as Giorgio Colli affirmed. In Poetics of Imagining: Modern to Post- modern, Richard Kearney describes our evolving perception of imagination from the twentieth to the twenty-first century, from phenomenological (Husserl), onto- logical (Heidegger), existential (Sartre), poetical (Bachelard), dialectical (Merleau- Ponty), hermeneutical (Ricoeur), to post-modern imagination (Lacan, Althusser, Foucault as in a labyrinth of mirrors, and Vattimo, Kristeva, Lyotard as hermeneu- ticians). At last, Richard speaks of a narrative imagination with an ethical function, within which cathegory I place Fabiani. His narration detailed the theories of im- agination of two Mercurial philosophers, Malebranche and Vico, and combine them to prepare unexpectedly the foreground for all the perspectives on imagina- tion analyzed by Kearney. The unsuspected symbolic triumph of pagan imagination and mentality in our times as it has even been exemplified in the lite- rary “infinite jest” of David Foster Wallace makes us hopeful for a recourse of a more benevolent imagination equally sponsored by sensation and reason. In its original language, the book has been reviewed by New Vico Studies 22 (2004), Qua- dernos Sobre Vico 15–16 (2003), and Bollettino del Centro di Studi Vichiani XXXIV Translator’s preface 11 (2004). The Centre d’Études en Rhétorique, Philosophie et Histoire des Idées (CERPHI) has also published abstracts of the book in English and Italian. By adding an Index, building a Bibliography of sources available in English, breaking long chapters into sections, and placing the Notes at the end of the book, we hope to have made it handier and suitable to research.