FANTASIA. — In general, it is the intermediary function between the immediate appearance of objects to the external senses and reflective knowledge of them, as is found above all in understanding: in this twofold relationship, first toward the external senses and then, in man, toward the higher activities, f.
conditions knowing itself in its initial structural phase, both in the sensory sphere and in the intellectual one. Yet, in this intermediate position, f. cannot bring any cognitive process to completion: neither that of existence, which can be attested only by immediate sensory presentations, nor that of essence, because knowledge of essence entails apprehension of the absolute meaning of things, which in itself transcends the particular image and representation, even if it presupposes them as the object’s first global presentation. Indeed, the etymology of f., which Aristotle derives from « light » (ἀπὸ τοῦ φάους: De An., III, 3, 429 a 3), indicates the (interior) appearance of objects that the senses see externally; this interior appearance in turn presupposes that objects of experience have a second form of presence, in addition to that of the direct stimulus upon the senses. This presence is called an image or « phantasm », which in turn is structured differently according to the multiplicity of tasks belonging to f., depending on whether it is related to sensory cognition or to the intellectual sphere, and to existence or essence. The essence of f., therefore, is to provide and consolidate in consciousness, at a first level, a constant structure of the object, so that the latter is not left entirely at the mercy of changing sensory impressions and may, at least remotely, be capable of comprehension and rational development. Moreover, f., insofar as it retains and prepares, in its own manner, the structures of objects, constitutes the fundamental condition of action itself, which, whether it is directed toward constructing objects through technique or aims at taking possession of them in order to satisfy its vital needs, requires that the object, in its spatiotemporal reality, constitute a « whole » and therefore present itself precisely with a structure of its own. Thus f., while conditioning every completed act of knowledge and every organized activity, in itself abstracts both from the truth of knowing and from the morality of acting, because truth and morality properly constitute the completion of the movement of consciousness: they consequently require a value judgment that bears directly, although differently according to the different objects, upon the existence or essence itself of things; and this judgment always has, albeit in various forms, a value of transcendence and a definitive positing of the object, whereas the movement proper to f. is directed toward the immanence of the object and its primordial, as yet problematic, positing.
The philosophical schools most directly engaged with problems of epistemology have concerned themselves with the difficult and intricate relationships that f. presents with the various forms of knowing and acting. Democritus already maintained, against the phenomenalism of Protagoras, that saying that every f. is true, given that this principle too is founded on an f., is equivalent to justifying the opposing principle that not every f. is true and thus also rendering false the principle that every f. is true (τὸ πᾶσαν φαντασίαν εἶναι ἀληθῆν: A, 114; H. Diels - W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, II, 5ª ed., Berlino 1935, p. 111, 19). This skepticism seems to have been explicitly upheld 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, 2ª ed., Berlino a Lipsia 1929, p. 590, 27-29), like the oar refracted in water that appears broken. Aristotle expounds his doctrine of f. (De An., III, 3, 427 a 26 agg.) in such a way as to safeguard the originality and clear distinction
between sensing and understanding, which the pre-Socratics, beginning with Homer (427 a 26), seem to confuse. First of all, f. is not pure sensation, because one senses only in the presence of sensibles, whereas f. operates even in sleep or with one’s eyes closed (428 a 1 agg.). Nor is f. identical with opinion (ὑπόληψις, δόξα), because opinion generates a conviction that f. usually lacks, and also because opinion may be true or false, whereas animals too possess f., while persuasion concerning truth is absent from them (428 a 25 - 9). Nor can f. be a mixture (συμπλοκή) of sensation and opinion, as Plato held (Soph., 264 b: σύμμεξις αἰσθήσεως καὶ δόξης). In its elementary function, f. is « the movement produced by sensation in act » (429 a 1), and therefore a « secondary movement » of the sensations themselves and a continuation of them (« persistence » = μοναί: De An., I, 4, 408 b 18) in the sensory centers. The phantasm consequently constitutes the object’s first structure 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 erects a first barrier of resistance to the incessant flow of experience and to its fragmentation (Post. An., II, 19, 100 a 8 agg.). Thus, on the one hand, Aristotle attributes to f. the primary sensory synthesis through which apprehension of the « perceptual continuum », of space and time, is made possible (cf. De Mem., 450 a 10-12); on the other, he posits f. as the foundation of intellectual knowing, insofar as the phantasm displays that particular and material structure whose universal and necessary reason is expressed by the concept. It is therefore in f. that understanding completes its reference to reality, since « the soul understands nothing without phantasms »—the fundamental principle of Aristotelian realism (De An., III, 7, 431 a 14; De Mem., 450 a 1 agg.)—insofar as, as s. Tommaso explains, sensible reality 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). Aristotle consequently affirms, at a second stage, an active collaboration of f. with 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 human f. because of its natural connection with the intellect (De An., III, 10, 433 b 29; 11, 434 a 10). Finally, it is f. that makes possible the expression of subjective states by means of the voice and language (De An., II, 8, 420 a 32), as well as every artistic and practical activity. Greek and Latin Aristotelians for the most part limited themselves to listing the principles of Aristotelian theory: the most notable contribution is to be found in the distinction, advanced by Averroes and also accepted by s. Tommaso, between f. and the cogitative power (v.) insofar as the latter directly elaborates the phantasms already given in their concrete meaning and thus makes possible the reference of the act of understanding to them. Thus s. Tommaso assigns « form », or external structure, as the object of f. and reserves for the cogitative power the « intentio », the concrete meaning of things (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 78, a. 4).
In the psychology of the Stoics, 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 made between a f. that apprehends existing reality and one that abstracts from reality (φ. κατὰ ληπτική, φ. ἀκατάληπτος). For Philo, 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 f. penetrates into all the functions of knowing and acting, even into the very revelations that God may make in dreams (De Summ., II, ed. cit., III, ibid. 1898, p. 259, 16 agg.). Plotinus essentially accepts the Aristotelian theory of f., to which he attributes memory as a 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 forms of f., one for sensible objects and one for intelligible objects—not, however, as separate entities, but in such a way that intelligible f. dominates sensory f. as reality dominates the shadow that reflects it (ibid., 31; ed. cit., p. 99, 4 ff.).
In scholasticism, apart from the Thomistic tradition, with the simplification of the theory of the internal senses, f. is often identified with common sense as a single internal sense, of which the four senses in Thomistic psychology represent merely different functions (cf. Suárez, De Anima, III, chap. 30; León 1635, p. 171, 18). This doctrine did not fail to influence the problems of the critical foundation of truth that occasioned the emergence of modern philosophy.
In modern philosophy, two principal directions emerge in the interpretation of f.: one belonging to the empirical school, which attributes the constructive synthesis of f. to the operation of the association of ideas (v.), and the other belonging to the idealist tendency, which sees in 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 derived 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 imagination, or productive f. (Einbildungskraft). This is to be regarded as a fundamental faculty of the human soul, the basis of all a priori knowledge, insofar as it makes it possible to subsume empirical material under its a priori category. This “mediation,” which f. performs in Kantianism between the a priori elements of cognition and the a posteriori material, culminates in the “transcendental schema,” which Kant calls “a product of productive f.” and which differs for the various categories, but has time as its ultimate a priori point of reference (Kr. d. r. Vern., Elementarlehre, part 2, sec. I, bk. 2, A. B. 113 ff.; A. 137 ff.; B. 176 ff.). For Fichte, productive f. is itself the generator of being and of the categories, insofar as both the I and the not-I, the object and the subject, are its work: the not-I, or object, originates through an unconscious activity independent of the I, and the not-I is none other than productive f., which structures and simultaneously comprehends the I and the not-I (Grundriss d. eig. Wissenschaftslehre, Nachgelassene Werke, I, Bonn 1834, p. 386). For Schelling, too, f. is unlimitedly creative, in contrast with the intellect, which stops at the limit, and reason, which strives toward knowledge of the Absolute in itself. Accordingly, the proper sphere of f. is that of artistic and mythological productions, and it properly constitutes “intellectual intuition in art” (Philosophie der Kunst, ed. minor, ed. O. Weiss, III, Leipzig 1907, p. 43). F.’s activity is deeper in the Hegelian system: it is, as in Aristotle, the intermediate moment between intuition and understanding and therefore constitutes the second stage in the development of consciousness, “in which intelligence passes from its abstract immanence to its determinateness” (Enzyklopädie d. philos. Wiss., § 455, Zusatz, ed. L. Boumann, Berlin 1845, p. 329). Hegel calls “religion of f.” that which personifies natural forces and represents them according to caprice, as in Indian religion, without any ideal of beauty such as was produced by Greek religion (Philosophie der Religion, Werke, ed. G. Lasson, XIII, Leipzig 1923, p. 137 ff.). Kierkegaard and Frohschammer appear, in turn, to follow in the footsteps of Fichte and Schelling. For the former, f. “stands in a relation to feeling (Föllelse), to knowledge, and to will,” and f. is generally the medium through which the infinite is attained (det Uendeliggjørende Medium): it is not a faculty like the others but is, so to speak, the faculty (tutor omnium) (S. Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, part 1, C [Samlede Værker, 2nd ed., XI, Copenhagen 1920, p. 162]). F. is simply identified with reflection, but reflection remains indeterminate in itself and can therefore, if it is not gathered around the self-consciousness of the I, lead to mania, pseudomysticism, and despair, like a “malasmatic” intoxication. This shows that the function of f. is essentially dialectical, because it can help man either to attain the infinite or to lose II. Frohschammer, on the other hand, developed the constructive potentiality of f., both as a faculty of the soul in itself (subjective f.) and in its development within itself through the process of nature (objective f.), and then in the absolute subjectivity of spirit, which is human personality. In contemporary psychology and phenomenology, f. is interpreted according to the principal orientation of consciousness itself: as the subjective principle that synthesizes the dispersed molecular elements with a view to the preservation and exercise of life (associationist and rationalist psychology); as the immediate capacity to apprehend the forms and structures of reality (the psychology of form, or Gestalttheorie, of M. Wertheimer and his disciples); or as the principle structuring behavior in function of the subject’s original freedom (existentialist phenomenology: J.-P. Sartre, M. Merleau-Fonzy). Whereas the psychologism of the old associationist school reduced thought to the image of f., Husserl’s pure phenomenology, with its theory of the intuition of essence (Wesensschau), O. Külpe’s Würzburg school, with its thesis of “thought without images” (vorstellungslose Denker), and Bergson’s theory of “pure intuition” reaffirm the originality of spiritual life, but neglect the real situation of human being and existence. Consequently, every theory of f. necessarily finds reflection in a corresponding conception of truth and of human life.
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