Proper use of the imagination. Malebranche reader of Regulae ad directionem ingenii
Journal title RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA
Author/s Frédéric de Buzon
Publishing Year 2012 Issue 2012/4 Language Italian
Pages 20 P. 671-690 File size 517 KB
DOI 10.3280/SF2012-004002
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Malebranche’s conception of imagination is often thought to be entirely contained in Book II of La Recherche de la vérité, which aims at destroying the beliefs and false theories resulting from the untempered use of that faculty. And yet Malebranche shows, in Book VI of the same work, that imagination has an essential function in the construction of science, particularly when it comes to producing geometrical models for phenomena; and it is, from the point of view of cognition, a singular cunning of reason which associates the presence of corporeal affects in the mind, and ideas, which enlighten it without touching it. This conception rests upon unacknowledged quotations from the Regulae ad directionem ingenii, which Malebranche must have had at hand while working on the Recherche. At stake is, for us, the precise understanding of the relation between mathematics and imagination, first in the Regulae and then in the Recherche, in the general context of the project of a universal science or mathesis universalis.
Keywords: Imagination, attention, geometry, mathesis universalis, Descartes
Frédéric de Buzon, Le bon usage de l’imagination: Malebranche lecteur des Regulae ad directionem ingenii in "RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA" 4/2012, pp 671-690, DOI: 10.3280/SF2012-004002