FANTASY. - It is in general the intermediary function between the immediate appearing of objects to the external senses and the reflected knowledge of them such as is had especially in understanding: in this twofold relation of its toward the external senses first and then, in man, toward the higher activities, the f. conditions in its first structural phase knowledge itself, both in the sensory sphere and in the intellectual one. If only in this intermediate position of its the f. cannot terminate any cognitive process: neither that of existence, which can be attested only by the immediate sensory presentations, nor that of essence, because knowledge of the essence involves the apprehension of the absolute meaning of things, which of itself transcends the image and the particular representation, even though it presupposes it as the first global presentation of the object. Indeed the etymology of f., which Aristotle derives from "light" (ἀπὸ τοῦ φάους: De An., III, 3, 429 a 3), indicates the (inner) appearing of the objects that the senses see externally; such inner appearing presupposes in turn that the objects of experience have a second form of presence, beyond that of the direct stimulus on the senses. This presence is called image or "phantasm," which in turn is structured differently according to the multiplicity of the tasks that belong to the f. depending on whether it relates to sensory knowledge or to the intellectual sphere, of existence or of essence. Its essence, therefore, is to furnish and consolidate in consciousness, at a first level, a constant structure of the object, so that this is not left wholly at the mercy of the changing sensory impressions and can, at least remotely, be susceptible of comprehension and rational development. Moreover the f., insofar as it retains and prepares in its own way the structures of objects, constitutes the fundamental condition of acting itself, which, whether it turns to constructing objects with technique or aims at taking possession of them to satisfy its vital needs, requires that the object in its spatio-temporal reality constitute a "whole" and therefore present itself precisely with a structure of its own. Thus the f., while conditioning every completed knowledge and every organized activity, of itself prescinds both from the truth of knowing and from the morality of acting, because truth and morality constitute properly the completion of the movement of consciousness: they therefore demand a value judgment that bears directly, albeit differently according to the different objects, on the existence or on the very essence of things, and this judgment always has, though in various forms, a value of transcendence and of definitive positing of the object, whereas the movement proper to the f. is in the direction of the immanence of the object and of its primordial and still problematic positing.
Around these arduous and intricate relations that the f. presents with the various forms of knowing and acting the philosophical schools most directly engaged in the problems of gnoseology have taken an interest. Already Democritus maintained, against the phenomenism of Protagoras, that to say that every f. is true, since this principle too is founded on a f., is equivalent to justifying the opposite principle that not every f. is true, and thus the principle that every f. is true turns out to be false as well (τὸ πᾶσαν φαντασίαν εἶναι ἀληθῆν: A, 114; H. Diels - W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, II, 5th ed., Berlin 1935, p. 111, 19). Such skepticism seems to have been expressly maintained by Leucippus, for whom - as Epiphanius writes (Adv. haer., III, 2, 9) - everything comes to be according to f. and opinion and nothing according to truth (κατὰ φαντασίαν καὶ δόκησιν τὰ πάντα γίνεσθαι καὶ μηδὲν κατὰ ἀλήθειαν: A, 33; ibid., II, p. 79, 19-27 and Davographi grossi, 2nd ed., Berlin and Leipzig 1929, p. 590, 27-29), like the oar refracted in the water that appears broken. Aristotle expounds his doctrine on the f. (De An., III, 3, 427 a 26 ff.) in such a way as to safeguard the originality and the clear distinction between sensing and understanding, which the Presocratics, beginning with Homer (427 a 26), seem to confuse. First of all the f. is not pure sensing, because one senses only in the presence of sensibles, whereas the f. operates also in sleep or with eyes closed (428 a 1 ff.). Nor is the f. identified with opinion (ὑπόληψις, δόξα), because this generates a conviction that is usually lacking in the f., and also because opinion can be true or false, whereas the f. is had also by animals, from which the persuasion of truth is absent (428 a 25 - 9). Nor can the f. be a mixture (συμπλοκή) of sensation and opinion, as Plato held (Soph., 264 b: σύμμεξις αἰσθήσεως καὶ δόξης). In its elementary function the f. is "the movement produced by sensation in act" (429 a 1) and therefore a "secondary movement" of the sensations themselves and, as it were, the continuation of them ("persistence" = μοναί: De An., I, 4, 408 b 18) in the sensory centers. The phantasm therefore constitutes the first structure of the object for consciousness: for Aristotle it presupposes the convergence of the external senses in the "common sense" (κατὰ αἰσθησις), so that in the phantasm the real sets up a first barrier of resistance to the incessant flow of experience and to its fragmentariness (Post. An., II, 19, 100 a 8 ff.). Thus Aristotle on the one hand attributes to the f. the primary sensory synthesis by which the apprehension of the "perceptual continuum," of space and of time, is made possible (cf. De Mem., 450 a 10-12), and on the other hand posits the f. as the foundation of intellectual knowledge insofar as the phantasm shows that particular and material structure whose universal and necessary reason the concept expresses. And it is therefore in the f. that understanding accomplishes its reference to reality, insofar as "the soul understands nothing except in phantasms," which is the fundamental principle of Aristotelian realism (De An., III, 7, 431 a 14; De Mem., 450 a 1 ff.), insofar as, as St. Thomas explains, the sensible real is always individual: "Unde natura lapidis vel cuiuscumque materialia rai cognosci non potest complete et vere, nisi secundum quod cognoscitur ut in particulari exsistens. Particulare autem apprehendimus per sensum et imaginationem; et ideo necesse est ad hoc quod intellectus actu intelligat suum obiectum proprium quod convertat se ad phantasmata et speculatur naturam universalis in particulari exsistentem" (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 84, a. 7). In a second moment Aristotle therefore affirms an active collaboration of the f. with respect to the higher functions of understanding and willing, so that alongside a sensory f. there is also a rational f. (φ. λογιστική) and a voluntary f. (φ. βουλευτική), which are evidently functions proper to the human f. because of its natural connection with the intellect (De An., III, 10, 433 b 29; 11, 434 a 10). It is the f., finally, that makes possible the expression of subjective states by means of the voice and of language (De An., II, 8, 420 a 32) as well as every artistic and practical activity. The Greek and Latin Aristotelians for the most part limited themselves to listing the principles of the Aristotelian theory: the most notable contribution is to be seen in the distinction, advanced by Averroes and accepted also by St. Thomas, between the f. and the cogitative (v.) insofar as this directly elaborates the phantasms, already given, in their concrete meaning and thereby makes possible the reference to them of the act of understanding. Thus St. Thomas attributes as the object of the f. the "form" or exterior structure and reserves to the cogitative the "intentio," the concrete meaning of things (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 78, a. 4).
In the psychology of the Stoics, the f. is "an impression of an image in the soul" (ὑποσάκις ἐν ψυχή: Stoic. vet. fragm., ed. H. v. Armin, II, Leipzig 1921, p. 56), and a distinction is drawn between an f. that is apprehensive of existing reality and an f. that prescinds from reality (φ. κατὰ ληπτική, φ. ἀκατάληπτος). For Philo, the f. constitutes, together with appetite, the essential function of the soul, which is defined as φάος προσελθῆναι φαντασίαν καὶ δρμήν (Leg. Alleg., II, 7; ed. L. Cohn and P. Wendland, I, Berlin 1896, p. 95, 15), so that the f. penetrates into all the functions of knowing and acting, down to the very revelations that God can make in dreams (De Summ., II, ed. cit., III, ibid. 1898, p. 259, 16 ff.). Plotinus essentially accepts the Aristotelian theory of the f., to which he attributes memory as its particular function (τὸ φανταστασία ἄρα ἡ μνήμη: Enn., IV, 3, 29; ed. E. Bröhler, IV, Paris 1927, p. 98, 31); but in his intellectualism Plotinus distinguishes two f., one for sensible objects and one for intelligibles, not however separate, but in such a way that the intelligible f. dominates the sensory f. as reality dominates the shadow that reflects it (ibid., 31; ed. cit., p. 99, 4 ff.).
In the Scholastic school, outside the Thomist tradition, with the simplification of the theory of the internal senses the f. is often identified with the common sense in a single internal sense, of which the four senses of Thomist psychology represent only different functions (cf. Suárez, De Anima, III, ch. 30; Lyon 1635, p. 171, 18); a doctrine that was not without influences on the problems of the critical foundation of truth that provoked the rise of modern philosophy.
In modern philosophy two main directions take shape in the interpretation of the f.: one, of the empiricist school, which attributes the constructive synthesis of the f. to the play of the laws of the association of ideas (v.); the other, of the idealist tendency, which sees in the f. the moment, or one of the moments, of the original activity of consciousness. Thus for Kant, the transcendental unity of apperception with the categories that derive from it on the one hand, and the molecular matter of sensations on the other, can be unified by virtue of the productive synthesis of the imagination, or productive f. (Einbildungskraft), which must be considered as a fundamental faculty of the human soul, as the foundation of all a priori knowledge insofar as it makes it possible to subsume empirical material under its a priori category: this "mediation," which the f. performs in Kantianism between the a priori elements of knowing and the a posteriori material, comes back to the "transcendental schema," which Kant calls "a product of the productive f." and which differs for the various categories but has time as its ultimate a priori reference (Kr. d. r. Vern., Elementarlehre, part 2, sec. I, l. 2, A. B. 113 ff.; A. 137 ff.; B. 176 ff.). For Fichte, the productive f. is the very generator of being and of the categories, insofar as both the I and the non-I, object and subject, are its work: the non-I, or object, originates by way of an unconscious activity that is independent of the I and the non-I, which is nothing other than the productive f. that structures and comprehends the I and the non-I together (Grundriss. d. eig. Wissenschaftslehre, Nachgelassene Werke, I, Bonn 1834, p. 386). For Schelling too, the f. is creative without limits, unlike the intellect, which stops at the limit, and reason, which tends toward the science of the Absolute in itself: therefore the proper sphere of the f. is that of the productions of art and of mythology, and it constitutes properly the "intellectual intuition in art" (Philosophie der Kunst, ed. minor edited by O. Weiss, III, Leipzig 1907, p. 43). Deeper is the activity of the f. in the Hegelian system: it is (as in Aristotle) the intermediate moment between intuition and understanding, and thus constitutes the second degree of the development of consciousness, "in which intelligence passes from its abstract immanence to its determinateness" (Enzyklop. d. philos. Wiss., § 455, Zusatz, ed. L. Boumann, Berlin 1845, p. 329). Hegel calls "religion of the f." that which personifies the forces of nature and represents them according to caprice, like the Indian religion, without any ideal of beauty, as the Greek religion did (Philosophie der Religion, Werke, ed. G. Lasson, XIII, Leipzig 1923, p. 137 ff.). Both Kierkegaard and Frohschammer seem to move along the tracks of Fichte and Schelling. For the former, the f. "stands in relation to feeling (Følelse), to knowledge and to the will," and the f. is in general the medium by which the infinite is reached (det Uendeligsgjørende Medium): it is not a faculty like the others but is, so to speak, the faculty (tutor omnium) (S. Kierkegaard, La malattia mortale, part 1, C [Samlede Værker, 2nd ed., XI, Copenhagen 1920, p. 162]). The f. is identified outright with reflection, but a reflection that remains in itself indeterminate and can therefore, if it is not gathered around the self-consciousness of the I, lead to mania, to pseudo-mysticism and to despair like an intoxication miasma: this means that the function of the f. is essentially dialectical, because it can help man both to reach the infinite and to lose it. Frohschammer, on the other hand, developed the constructive virtuality of the f. both as a faculty of the soul in itself (subjective f.) and in its development in itself in the process of nature (objective f.) and then in the absolute subjectivity of spirit, which is the human personality. In contemporary psychology and phenomenology, the f. is interpreted according to the principal orientation of consciousness itself: as a subjective principle of synthesis of the molecularly dispersed with a view to the conservation and exercise of life (associationist and rationalist psychology) and as an immediate capacity for the apprehension of the forms and structures of the real (form psychology, or Gestalttheorie, of M. Wertheimer and his disciples) or as a principle of the structure of behavior in function of the original freedom of the subject (existentialist phenomenology: J.-P. Sartre, M. Merleau-Ponty). While the psychologism of the old associationist school reduced thought to the image of the f., Husserl's pure phenomenology with the theory of the intuition of essence (Wesensschau), the Würzburg school of O. Külpe with the thesis of an "imageless thought" (vorstellungsloses Denken), and Bergson's theory of "pure intuition" indeed reaffirm the originality of spiritual life but neglect the real situation of being and of human existence. Consequently every theory of the f. is necessarily reflected in a corresponding conception of truth and of human life.
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Cornelio Fabro