Imagination and Insight with Dr. Naomi Fisher (Part 2 of Symposium on Spiritual Yearning in a Disenchanted Age)

Naomi Fisher is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. She earned her Ph.D in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame in 2016, and prior to that earned her M.S. in physics from UC Davis.

Her research focuses on Kant and German Idealism and Romanticism, specifically the relationship between nature, freedom, and rationality in Kant and Schelling. Currently, she is working on projects related to the impact of Plato and Neoplatonism on Schelling’s philosophy. She also has interests in the broader history of philosophy, philosophy of science, and philosophy of religion.

In her talk, she discusses: 

1. The disconnect between epiphanies and everyday thought
2. On the function of imagination in philosophy
3. The philosophy of art according to Schelling
4. Manifesting the divine through the power of imagination
5. Comparing Schelling’s work to the Romantics
6. On accessing transcendent realities

To learn more about Naomi, you can find her at:

Website: https://naomifisher.weebly.com/
Email: naomi.luce@gmail.com 

This episode is sponsored by:
John Templeton Foundation (https://www.templeton.org/)
Templeton Religion Trust (https://templetonreligiontrust.org/)

Transcript

(Intro)

Brandon: I'm Brandon Vaidyanathan, and this is Beauty at Work — the podcast that seeks to expand our understanding of beauty, what it is, how it works, and why it matters for the work we do. This season of the podcast is sponsored by John Templeton Foundation and Templeton Religion Trust.

Hey, everyone. This is the second episode from our International Symposium on Spiritual Yearning in a Disenchanted Age. Our speaker is Professor Naomi Fisher. Dr. Fisher is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and an MS in Physics from UC Davis. Her main areas of research are Kant and German idealism. Let's get started.

Dr. Naomi: Well, I am so honored to be here and very happy to be a part of this conversation. Thank you so much to Brandon for organizing this, and for Charles, of course, for bringing us all together. So in my abstract, which I think at least some of you had in advance, I described two related problems. The first is the potential disconnect or compartmentalization between epiphanies on the one hand and then discursive, descriptive thought on the other. So I worry that perhaps, you know, we go to the mountains and have this great experience, but then that has very little relevance for what we do in our day-to-day lives or in our sort of language or systems of thought. The second was the potentially problematic solitary nature of the epiphanic so that we maybe paradigmatically experience these things alone. Although sort of some conversations I've had since being here, maybe I think like, "Oh, maybe there are ways of conceiving of this differently." So I'm interested to talk about that. But in these comments, I'll actually focus primarily on the first thing and the way that the Romantics and Schelling, in particular, think of the imagination as providing a kind of mediation. Because I think that's where maybe these German idealists and Romantics have something interesting to say to us about how the imagination does some mediating work between this sort of experience, insight into some absolute on the one hand and then systems of thought on the other.

So I work on Schelling primarily, also on Kant. But Schelling, he's maybe the only figure who is uncontroversially both an idealist and a romantic. So I believe his philosophical works are an excellent resource for understanding the philosophical contours of Romanticism. In his identity philosophy period—so that's like in the years right after Jena, or he's still at Jena but right after the sort of heyday of Jena—in the years 1800 to about 1804, 1806, he becomes really interested in the function of the imagination and art in giving intuitive access to the absolute, specifically to its unity. Neoplatonic scholars would call, yes, the one features heavily here. So I put some texts on your handout, and these are typical for Shelling at this time. Schelling has a division similar to that, that I read also in Cosmic Connections, between sort of systematic scientific thought on the one hand and then, on the other hand, what Schelling calls variously: absolute cognition, exhibition, reason, intellectual intuition. And he's keen to demonstrate the mutual relevance of these two modes of thought.

Crucial to Schelling's view of the connection between these modes of thought is the imagination. We imaginatively represent the particular object, whether it's an object in nature or a work of art, as an expression of the absolute. And in doing so, the features of that object which are relevant to its integrity and unity come to the fore. Schelling draws an analogy with geometrical proof to highlight the connection between intuition on the one hand and discursivity on the other. In a geometrical proof, a single triangle constructed by the geometer can exhibit the essence of space or triangularity more particularly in a geometrical demonstration. He says, and this is one of the quotes on your handout, "The triangle that the geometer constructs is the absolute, the simply real one." So just as the geometer with the imperfect and particular triangle is exhibiting the essence of triangularity, so too any finite thing seen in the right way exhibits the absolute. So the geometer knows which of the features of the triangle are relevant to the demonstration and which are not. To attend in the right way to the triangle is something we do, I think, naturally. But it's sort of remarkable, I guess, when you sort of think why. Why is like this particular angle not relevant, but the way that I can draw a curve over here with a compass is relevant? And so being able to attend to those features which exhibit the very nature of space, as opposed to sort of the mere particularity of a triangle, seems like something we're doing maybe with the imagination. And so something similar enables the connection, I think, between this epiphanic insight and other kinds of discursivity. So we imaginatively see the things around us in terms of their relation to the absolute, their exhibition of the absolute, and the truth about their essence is made manifest from which we can then draw discursively articulated conclusions.

Schelling talks a lot about genius, which is a word with a lot of baggage. I think he's thinking primarily of Goethe—specifically Goethe the poet, of course, but also Goethe the scientist, the botanist—where Goethe is able to sort of recognize the same absolute form and the structures of plants and sort of the generation of leaves. He also does work on the skeletal structure of human beings and animals and the similarities there. So this notion that we can sort of see the integral unity of the particular thing and also recognize the same form in its mutual instances, or the same essence perhaps in its mutual instances, Schelling attributes that to this poetic insight. Works of art are both created and seen aright through the activity of the imagination. In Schelling's lectures on the philosophy of art, he toys with the word "einbildung" or imagination. And I have some notes there on your handout about that particular wordplay, which is really fun. Our imagination in forming unities participates in the power of divine creation, and thereby is a manifestation of the divine. Not only do we manifest the divine in such creation, but the works of art that are created are themselves images of the absolute. And so he states that the excellent German word "Einbildungskraft" (power of the imagination) actually means the power of integration. "Ineinsbildung" means like forming into one. I translated integration. But you can see there, obviously, “einbildung” is part of that word in a way. The "einbildung" can mean like informing. Yeah, there's various ways he toys with this. Obviously, prominent in that word is also "bild," which means image. So just like an imagination, I suppose.

He says, "Upon this power is based all creation. The true construction of art is the exhibition of its forms as the forms of things, as they are in themselves or in the absolute." And the "or" there I think is important. It doesn't mean like either this or that. I think it means, it's just like glossing what it means to be in themselves. That is what they are in the absolute. So what they are in themselves is what they are in the absolute. Just as the geometer sees the triangle more truly when she sees it as sort of in its absoluteness as the essence of triangularity, so too we see the artwork or any created thing more truly when we see its essence as absolute, or as an image, or exhibition of the absolute. To create something is to create it as its own integral unity as an individual, and this unity is an image of the unity and integrity of the absolute. So as I say on your handout, there's this vertical dimension where creation is a bringing-together of disparate elements into an integral unity. So you're like creating something new with its own integrity. Importantly, for Schelling, he has this robust notion of being. So you can't just say that there's an object constructed out of these, this paper and this pen. To be is to have a kind of integral unity. And so anything that is truly is sort of an image of the unity of the absolute.

We can compare Schelling's theorizing here to the work of the Romantics. So I have Novalis' poem there on your handout, the Marian lead. Let me just read it. "I see you in a thousand images, Maria, beautifully expressed. Yet none of them can depict you as my soul perceives you. I only know that the world's turmoil, since then like a dream, fades away, and an indescribably sweet heaven remains eternally in my heart." It's obviously more pretty in the German, but that's my sort of wooden translation. But the thousand images are variously expressive of the one truth which is, here, Maria. Maria is mirrored and beautifully expressed in a plurality of images. This is consistent with Schelling's own conception of the imagination as a way of seeing the world more truly than can be captured through discursive description. The insight into these expressions seems to be enabled by the soul's immediate—that is unmediated—perception and love of Maria. So the poet here illuminates an imaginative but true way of seeing things as expressions of something beyond articulation.

Since Schelling's time, I think that the epiphanic is increasingly not seen as insight into the truth of things. Science maybe gives the objective truth, and epiphanies are mere subjective feelings. Pleasant but perhaps not truth apt or relevant to any cohesive picture of the world. Perhaps to look to poetry for insight into how to alter our concept seems almost ridiculous to a contemporary frame of mind. Yet I would contend that there are ways of recovering an openness to transcendence or modifying even our scientific modes of thought to allow for transcendence. That is if we give up the notion of a comprehensive or fully accurate system of metaphysics or science, embracing instead systems of knowledge that point beyond themselves the thought that an imaginative way of seeing things does not seem naive.

The artistic or epiphanic needs to be interpreted within our systems of discursive thought as a more reliable, full account of things than any science or mere description could provide. I'm not sure about this, so let me venture that this does not necessarily involve some shared, articulated presuppositions, even very thin ones—for instance, a belief in God, supernatural realities goodness, teleology, transcendence—but rather a sort of general indication of the limits of description in such a way that these spiritual transcendent realities, or maybe underlying realities, or realities shot through the cosmos are accessed extra systematically. So I suggest that these realities are accessed and shared not through a common, universally communicable description but rather through communal practices, living in such a way or engaging in such activities that acknowledge a reality beyond our modes of description.

Rob mentioned yesterday, he mentioned choirs. And I think that might be sort of way of thinking about this as we are deeply attentive to the contribution of the other person as we're engaging in this creative act. The gain of Romantics, we're also eager to develop a universal poetry, a new mythology that would draw together the culture into a cosmopolitan whole. I believe that Schelling's own work is not meant to be a sort of constricting, limiting metaphysical system but rather a way of thinking about systematicity more generally, that maintains its openness to transcendence and can take a variety of forms. This is in part evinced by his development of multiple philosophical systems and methods, which are not themselves meant to be exclusive or competing but rather different ways of imaging and articulating the conceptually inexhaustible world in which we live.

(outro)

Brandon: Alright, folks. That's a wrap for this episode. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it with someone who would find it of interest. Also, please subscribe and leave us a review if you haven't already. Thanks, and see you next time.