Quote:
Originally Posted by skip spence
I would say that different 'stages of knowledge' precede different 'stages of imagination'; yet the opposite could also be close to the truth. Knowledge can restrict imagination but is probably not possible without it either. We imagine what we don't know. Some leave it at that, others go out to learn the truth.
|
Just don't give me all this stuff to jump on!
We're getting scaringly philosophical in here...
Okay I'll just make a few comments on this: "We imagine what we don't know. Some leave it at that, others go out to learn the truth."
Up to the 19th century people thought that imagination was a faculty of mind that was able to separate those impressions that in fact belonged together and to join together different parts of things that were separate. Therefore a unicorn was just a human mind's application of a horned beast to a horse or a centaur the compilement of a human "upper body" tied to a horse's hind. Both were parts of earlier experiences so there was nothing new in there. Just splitting and adding from previous experiences.
In the end this was a theological question of whether a human mind could come forwards creating something there wasn't before - already Nicolas Cusanus thought in the 15th century that the humans were able to come up with new things as there were spikes and stalks in nature but only humans could produce a fork adding these two things up. But the general opinion was and were for a long time that all humans could do was to imitate the works of nature (powered by a God) and thus imagination was just dissecting or bringing together of things already existant in the God's creation perceived by men.
With the advent of romanticism there then emerged the idea of humans as all powerful creratures (hinted in the humanism of Pico della Mirandolla and other 15th century "humanists"). The added feature in the 19th century was the break from the past were the human geniuses were given the gift of actually creating something new or more real than the world around us from their individual psyche (or whatever). And you thought Freud invented the unconscious? No he didn't. It was the talk of the town already with the 19th century idealistic-romantic philosophers who aligned themselves with the artists (like Blake & fellows).
So the sentence: "We imagine what we don't know" only comes possible in the latter part of the 19th century and even then it has work to do to gain universal appeal. Now Tolkien surely was cognizant of this discussion...
The latter part then... "Some leave it at that, others go out to learn the truth".
The question of the meaning of the word 'truth' is one of the hardest ones. Truth comparing to what, reality itself (which is it outside human classifications - which is unprovable, or which is made by men whereafter we argue in a circle?), anyone's opinion, feeling of certainty, emotional tiedness, religious belief?
There's no easy answer here...
But was Tolkien going for the "correspondency theory" of truth, meaning that our language and the world just somehow share the same structures making our sentences able to say things in truth / express them correctly - even if our language today has possibly lost some of the key things the generations before us knew as some people say? Or is this just easy escapism in confronting the real world (whatever it is but the one that keeps disappointing us) which denies the past values?