Descartes's Imagination: Proportion, Images, and the Activity of Thinking

Descartes's Imagination: Proportion, Images, and the Activity of Thinking
by Dennis L. Sepper

Publisher: University of California Press 1996
ISBN/ASIN: 0520200500
ISBN-13: 9780520200500
Number of pages: 322

Description:
Rene Descartes is commonly portrayed as a strict rationalist, a philosopher who theorized a radical, unresolvable split between mind and body. In this long-overdue examination of the role of imagination in Descartes's thought, Dennis Sepper reveals a Descartes quite different from the usual dualistic portrayals and offers a critical reconception of the genesis and nature of the philosopher's thought. In a vigorous analysis of the less-known early works, Sepper finds that initially Descartes assigned the imagination a central role in the mind's activity.