While for Hobbes imagination and memory are different names for the same function, Descartes sets up an alternative between them, which however shifts their relative role as his philosophy changes in the 1630s and 1640s. In the Rules memory is intrinsically weak, and Descartes proposes to freeze its movement in an ideally simultaneous intuition; on the other hand, imagination is the indispensable mediation between the intellect and our knowledge of extension. In the Meditations, in turn, Descartes demotes imagination to sensible picturing and opposes imagining and conceiving. At the same time, he distinguishes between corporeal and intellectual memory. Intellectual memory, now internal to the cogito, manifests a fundamental relation between thought and time.
Immaginazione e memoria in Hobbes e Cartesio
FERRARIN, ALFREDO
2007-01-01
Abstract
While for Hobbes imagination and memory are different names for the same function, Descartes sets up an alternative between them, which however shifts their relative role as his philosophy changes in the 1630s and 1640s. In the Rules memory is intrinsically weak, and Descartes proposes to freeze its movement in an ideally simultaneous intuition; on the other hand, imagination is the indispensable mediation between the intellect and our knowledge of extension. In the Meditations, in turn, Descartes demotes imagination to sensible picturing and opposes imagining and conceiving. At the same time, he distinguishes between corporeal and intellectual memory. Intellectual memory, now internal to the cogito, manifests a fundamental relation between thought and time.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
