imagination

is the vehicle of participation between human sensation and the ideas, with the art of genius featuring prominently as the perfect expression of their unity.

The peculiar, intermediate status of imagination, accepted by Aquinas as self-evident in his commentary on De anima, contributed to the considerable fascination of philosophers and artist with the concept. In the synthesis of Plato and Aristotle ventured by the Renaissance philosophers Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, imagination featured as the vehicle of participation between human sensation and the ideas, with the art of genius featuring prominently as the perfect expression of their unity (see Cassirer et al., 1948). Imagination maintained this elevated status in spite of the best efforts of Descartes to bring it down to earth 'by dissecting the heads of various animals' in search of it. (see Caygill, 1989, chapter 3).

Ficino Marsilio

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