Imagination in Cognition: Contemporary and Ancient Perspectives

This project brings into dialogue approaches to imagination in contemporary and Ancient Greek philosophy to analyze the ways in which imagination contributes to fulfilling the aims of inquiry. By comparing and contrasting contemporary and ancient perspectives, the project seeks to uncover from ancient philosophy cognitive roles of imagination that have not thus far been sufficiently considered in the contemporary literature, such as its role in the generation of hypotheses and in attaining understanding, and to apply contemporary conceptual distinctions concerning imagination to ancient authors to develop fruitful and novel interpretations of historical debates about the cognitive role of imagination.