REPRESENTATION. – It is the term of a cognitive act when this is not immediately apprehensive and presentative of the known reality (it corresponds to the scholastic term *species expressa*).
R. is a generic term applicable to the image, to the concept (v.), idea (v.). Different, in the various theories of knowledge (v.), is the function, the importance, and the value attributed to R. According to a theory that dominates much of modern philosophy, knowledge always and only terminates in R.; from this, according to some (e.g., Descartes, Locke, Kant, positivism; V. these entries), the existence of realities in themselves should then be inferred; whereas for others, e.g., SCHOPENHAUER, ARTHUR (v.), “the world is my R.” (*Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung*, I, § 1). According to other philosophies (Galluppi, Husserl, some Neoscholastics), instead, knowledge is originally the apprehension or presence of a reality, and R. is merely the means by which, in certain cases (even if in most cases), we come to know realities not immediately present.