Philosophical Imagination and the Evolution of Modern Philosophy

Throughout modern history, the philosophical imagination has created the philosophical perspectives of modern materialism, rationalism, empiricism, phenomenalism, historicism, existentialism, pragmatism, hermeneutics, and feminism. Although these schools of thought have their origin in the imagination, we all too often believe these perspectives give us access to truth itself, rather than being ways to make sense of our experience. Truth as something to know will always be relative to the imagination and the perspectives it creates. However, another notion of truth as something to be has emerged over the history of philosophical thought from Socrates to the present that is not relative to the changing perspectives of truth as something to know. This book offers a narrative of how the modern mind evolved through the philosophical imaginations of certain individuals who provided new perspectives in order to make sense of emerging data and circumstances of which the inherited philosophical perspectives of the day were unable to explain.

James P. Danaher, Ph.D. is Professor of Philosophy, Nyack College, Nyack, NY. He has written several books including Jesus’ Copernican Revolution: Revelation of Divine Mercy.