oa De ambivalente verbeeldingskracht

René Descartes, among others, tried to downplay the role of the human imagination by identifying man’s true inner nature with our rational thinking self, a view that according to many became central to the modern self-understanding. In the wake of the 20th-century critiques of this Cartesian view of man, imagination is finally making its comeback. What is often overlooked, however, is that for a long time imagination was deemed vitally important. This project takes a close look at philosophical theories of the imagination in a crucial, but neglected, period in which it was still considered by many, for better or worse, to belong to human nature no less than reason (1350–1600).