Synesius of Cyrene (b. ca. 373–d. ca. 410) was trained in the classical literature that depicted war as an event with armies opposing one another in battle, but he experienced a different kind of conflict in his own life – namely, the periodic and unpredictable raiding that troubled late ancient Libya. Synesius’ letters and his treatise On Kingship show that these conflicts brought sentiment to the surface as a kind of evidence about people that could be implicitly trusted; Synesius’ sentiment was palpably xenophobic, aligned against both “barbarians” and “Scythians,” and so strong as to circumvent rational examinations of the evidence around him. This essay examines the scaffolded construction of stereotype, built in Synesius’ advice to a hypothetical ruler, and demonstrates how knowledge, even knowledge that seems intimate and trustworthy, can be bent through engagements with violence.

Ambrosio reads Charles Peirce’s pragmatic maxim as inviting us to conduct experiments with our imaginations. On her account, the images that Peirce used to prompt his audience into such imaginative inquiry are tools that elicit imaginative activity. But since they are external and public, they also constrain that activity, resulting in shared habits that are subject to social criticism and thus to change. Ambrosio also considers John Dewey’s characterization of deliberation as “dramatic rehearsal” in the imagination of different possible courses of action. While she notes that Dewey’s approach to the imagination adds a moral dimension missing from Peirce’s, she sees the two pragmatists as united in the view that experimental imaginative activities are empirical and social with important material components. She also engages with contemporary work on the imagination, suggesting that contributors to recent debates on that topic would benefit from studying Peirce and Dewey.

In this introduction to Pragmatism Revisited, Robert Lane summarizes the book’s fifteen chapters. Those chapters apply classical and newer pragmatist ideas to a wide range of issues, including the imagination, conceptual change, ignorance, religious fundamentalism, truth in political discourse, authoritarian populism, academic freedom, criminal punishment and mass incarceration, environmental philosophy, bioethics, artificial intelligence, the Black intellectual tradition, feminism, gender, and social construction; the final chapter examines the future of pragmatism itself.

Ambrosio reads Charles Peirce’s pragmatic maxim as inviting us to conduct experiments with our imaginations. On her account, the images that Peirce used to prompt his audience into such imaginative inquiry are tools that elicit imaginative activity. But since they are external and public, they also constrain that activity, resulting in shared habits that are subject to social criticism and thus to change. Ambrosio also considers John Dewey’s characterization of deliberation as “dramatic rehearsal” in the imagination of different possible courses of action. While she notes that Dewey’s approach to the imagination adds a moral dimension missing from Peirce’s, she sees the two pragmatists as united in the view that experimental imaginative activities are empirical and social with important material components. She also engages with contemporary work on the imagination, suggesting that contributors to recent debates on that topic would benefit from studying Peirce and Dewey.

Dante’s defense of the life of reason can guide our consideration of the most current concerns.We are more in need that ever of a theoretical basis for openness, for ongoing inquiry, and for a genuinely common good. Dante’s understanding helps us think more clearly about the dogmatisms of our age, which, as ever, envision comprehensive transformations of human life uninformed by the moderating self-knowledge available in the poem.

As our power grows, it becomes more necessary judge its use, to assess the relative weight of the goods we seek when that power is deployed.To do so, we rely on reason as a guide. But reason’s capacity to adjudicate among goods is widely doubted. It requires a defense. This chapter argues that a premodern thinker may best be equipped to meet this need.

Abstract: In this chapter, Fesmire reassesses John Dewey’s Human Nature and Conduct (1922) through four enduring themes: the role of social habits in moral growth, the centrality of imagination in moral deliberation, the importance of unintended consequences in ethical decision-making, and moral progress as problem-solving. Fesmire describes Dewey’s view of moral dilemmas as entanglements of conflicting forces without absolute resolutions. Dewey’s theory of “dramatic rehearsal” describes moral deliberation as an imaginative process of anticipating outcomes. Dewey emphasizes the interconnectedness of means and ends, urging ethical inquiry that is experimental and adaptable. Fesmire situates this within Dewey’s later pluralism, which rejects singular ethical principles in favor of reconciling competing moral considerations. Dewey ultimately frames moral progress as an ongoing process of intelligent inquiry rather than adherence to fixed doctrines. As Fesmire shows, Dewey’s approach encourages democratic, participatory ethics, emphasizing open dialogue and flexibility in resolving moral conflicts.

This chapter focuses on the role that allusion plays in establishing a shared language of intimacy. It describes how Wollstonecraft and Godwin, in their letters to one another, trade literary allusions as a way of flirting. That practice cast doubt on the transparency of speech, however, since the difficulty of openly expressing feeling, versus the relative ease of slipping into a literary cliché, led to the sense of distrust that also features throughout their letters. The tension between transparency and trust is further explored in the pair’s novels. Wollstonecraft’s The Wrongs of Woman; or, Maria presents a heroine who falls in love with a man based on the books he reads, in a manner which suggests either quixotic delusion or a defiant trust in the imagination. Godwin’s novels depict scenes of shared reading which rethink his earlier philosophical discussions of personal affection versus independence, and openness versus secrecy or reserve.

Revival processes appear central to folk musics across different cultural and national traditions. Consequently, this chapter argues that, rather than perceiving revival as the exception, processes of revival and change should thus be perceived as a central feature of tradition. As is outlined here, revival needs to be approached from a much broader perspective. Falling back on case studies from England, Latvia, and Germany, this chapter further analyzes how acts of revival are entangled with themes of authenticity and nostalgia. Utilizing different claims of authenticity as elaborated by Denis Dutton, these waves of revivalism might be described as a defensive mechanism against eras of accelerated global change. Following scholars such as Svetlana Boym and Ross Cole, folk revivalism can thus be understood as an act of imaginative investment in the past and future, a nexus where nostalgia and utopia – as a counterpoint or solution to this sentiment of loss – meet.

In this chapter Angeline Morrison offers an exquisitely written account of what mythopoeic singing means to her and why it is central to reimagining the history of British folk music. Drawing on the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, she highlights the transformative power of song. Disembodied, imaginal, or non-physical things, she argues, can be sung into being. This process can serve the cause of decolonization by engaging in a form of contemporary mythmaking that re-enchants and re-populates historical landscapes with figures known to have been present, but who may not be identifiable in the body of song that survives.

Imaginings play a crucial role in accounting for fictionality, but what are they? Focusing on those invited by fictions, this chapter argues for the deflationary view that imaginings are just entertainings, I=E. This view was standard in early analytic philosophy, but few current writers appear to hold it. The chapter critically addresses an argument by Walton against I=E that may contribute to explaining this turn; some who espouse views that are otherwise close to I=E endorse this argument against it. In response to Walton’s argument, the chapter invokes a point suggested by Walton himself: Many imaginings – i.e., entertainings, on the view defended here – are mental episodes that agents launch for a purpose. The chapter also appeals to this fact to dispose of a miscellany of other contemporary considerations against I=E. In addition to answering objections, the chapter offers a positive consideration in favor of I=E: to wit, that it may help to establish the imagination as a fundamental, irreducible mental attitude – a view that many philosophers do endorse.

Inter-Asian Law is starkly absent from constitutional accounts of reproductive rights in Asia. Instead, Asian jurisdictions tend to draw from the Global North, with the United States Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade occupying norm status. To explicate the potential of Inter-Asian Law in transforming reproductive rights, an act of imagination is required, suspending Roe as the central comparative frame and introducing alternate, hypothetical referents from Asia. This chapter conducts this task at two stages. First, it develops imagination as a method of comparative constitutional law. Second, applying the imaginative method, it hypothesizes what reproductive rights might look like if Nepal served as a referent for India and India as a referent for Bangladesh. In documenting explicit shifts in the constitutional construction of these rights, the chapter cements the place of Inter-Asian Law.

The recreative view of the imagination sees it as a ‘mirror’ of basic mental attitudes: There are imaginative (pretend) variants of beliefs, i-beliefs (ordinarily called imaginings), i-seeings (visualizings), i-desires, i-emotions … the imagination is ‘half of psychic life’, as Meinong put it. The single attitude rival view sees the imagination instead as a sui generis nonderivative mental attitude, with distinctive traits: distinctive functional roles, distinctive norms to which it is beholden, and a distinctive phenomenology. This chapter confronts a recent argument by analogy for i-desires, due to Greg Currie, which is based on an alleged parallel between beliefs and desires. The chapter argues in response that this argument fails because the parallel on which it relies fails to obtain on different influential accounts of desires. The discussion strengthens responses to earlier arguments for i-desires.

Janum Sethi investigates Kant’s application of hylomorphism to the theory of self-consciousness, as evident in the distinction he draws between transcendental and empirical apperception. According to Sethi, the standard reading of this distinction overlooks that it is drawn in terms of a distinction between transcendental and empirical unity of apperception, which can be traced to the distinct natures of the two faculties that produce these unities: whereas the former is brought about according to the rational laws of the understanding, the latter is a result of the psychological laws of the imagination. In light of this, Sethi argues that the two types of apperception amount to a subject’s awareness of two cognitively essential aspects of herself: namely, her spontaneity and her receptivity – that is, of her capacity to receive the material for cognition through the senses and of her capacity to impart a certain form to this material through the use of the understanding.

What is play? How does play develop? What is the relationship between play, learning and development? This book looks at these central questions from the perspectives of children, families, educators and what is known from research. You are encouraged to read and reflect on the content as you progress through the book. Although each chapter brings in different dimensions, the approach taken is interactive, with most chapters (but not all) inviting you to consider specific research into play practices, and to generate your own ideas/data to discuss or critique. We begin the journey in this first chapter by looking at your ideas and the writings of others on the topic ‘What is play?’

We have seen how imagination can plausibly be taken to be part of a perceptual referential apparatus. Sensory imaginations therefore contribute to the fulfillment of an empirical intuition’s cognitive roles. The aim of the analysis in this chapter is three-fold: (1) to throw more light upon what is added by imagination to empirical cognition of objects, in the form of perceptual memories and quasi-perceptual anticipations – this is lower order objectification that goes beyond mere perceptual objectification in its own right but which may also be part of higher order objectification through concepts; (2) to show how imagination that mixes with perceptions may also lead to false perceptual judgments – misperception is a topic of this chapter, whereas hallucination is discussed in Chapter 9; (3) to bring out the lack of reality-character of fictional imaginations, even when these imitate perceptions, so as to throw more light upon the nature of perceptions.