Is an image merely an inferior copy of the actual thing? Is imagination simply an escape from reality? In both cases, Alfredo Ferrarin thinks not and, breaking classical assumptions that images are exclusively reproductions and imagination is a secondary faculty, this book provides a rich account of what images really are and what imagination can do.
Ferrarin begins by examining and disputing several commonplaces on images and imagination, both in everyday language and in many traditional philosophical approaches. With a lightness of touch throughout, he brings a broad range of thinkers into dialogue, from Aristotle, Kant, and Freud to Husserl, Wittgenstein, Sartre. He then proceeds to examine the twofold nature of every image – the image itself and what it is an image of – before distinguishing between natural, artificial, mental, and memory images. The final chapters probe the cognitive functions of imagination; the notions of fiction, play, and literary creation; and imagination in relation to praxis and the social world.
Comparing and relating how we conceptualize imagination to how we think about the concept of reality, Ferrarin contends that, whilst it can be, imagination is not always a flight from reality – it is also a way of figuring out what is real.

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Information
Topic
PhilosophySubtopic
Aesthetics in PhilosophyTable of contents
- Cover
- Half-Title
- Series
- Dedication
- Title
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: What Do We Talk about When We Talk about Images and Imagination?
- 1 The Power and the Mediums of the Image
- 2 Perception, Image, and Imagination
- 3 A Typology of Images
- 4 Imagining and Thinking
- 5 The Reality of Representation: Fantasy, Play, Fiction
- 6 The Theater of the Soul: The Practical Imagination
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Copyright
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Yes, you can access A World Not of this World by Alfredo Ferrarin in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophy & Aesthetics in Philosophy. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.