Imagination
by Mary Warnock
On This Page
Description
Imagination is an outstanding contribution to a notoriously elusive and confusing subject. It skillfully interrelates problems in philosophy, the history of ideas and literary theory and criticism, tracing the evolution of the concept of imagination from Hume and Kant in the eighteenth century to Ryle, Sartre and Wittgenstein in the twentieth. She strongly belies that the cultivation of imagination should be the chief aim of education and one of her objectives in writing the book has been to show more put forward reasons why this is so. Purely philosophical treatment of the concept is shown to be related to its use in the work of Coleridge and Wordsworth, who she considers to be the creators of a new kind of awareness with more than literary implications. The purpose of her historical account is to suggest that the role of imagination in our perception and thought is more pervasive than may at first sight appear, and that the thread she traces is an important link joining apparently different areas of our experience. She argues that imagination is an essential element in both our awareness of the world and our attaching of value to it. show lessTags
Recommendations
Members
- Recently Added By
Author Information

28+ Works 1,060 Members
Mary Warnock was born Helen Mary Wilson in Winchester, England on April 14, 1924. She studied classics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She taught philosophy at St. Hugh's College, Oxford from 1949 to 1966. She was the headmistress of the all-girl Oxford High School from 1966 until 1972 and was the mistress of Girton College at the University of show more Cambridge from 1984 to 1991. She served on government panels that examined special education and laboratory experimentation using animals and was the chairwoman of the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilization and Embryology in 1982. She was appointed a dame commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1984 and became a life peer the following year. She took the title Baroness Warnock of Weeke and a seat in the House of Lords, from which she retired in 2015. She died after a fall on March 20, 2019 at the age of 94. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Philosophy, Literature Studies and Criticism, Science & Nature
- DDC/MDS
- 153.3 — Philosophy & psychology Psychology Conscious mental processes and intelligence Creativity And Visualization
- LCC
- BF408 .W28 — Philosophy, Psychology and Religion Psychology Psychology Consciousness. Cognition
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 60
- Popularity
- 517,335
- Languages
- English, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 7






















































