The concept of imagination is today seen as as a legitimate object of study, having long been discredited by scientific research. However, in modern and contemporary literature, imagination is generally considered in a negative way, as a mental faculty that can cause disease, error, illusion or sin. By cons, its role was very important, because the imagination formed the necessary link between body and soul. So that was the preferred place to act to perform bodily healing as well as spiritual. We would go against this idea of imagination by studying intellectual tradition and alternative and misunderstood practice. Since the XII^th and XIII^th centuries until the early XIX^th century, thinkers and practitioners from a diverse set of disciplines, expressing themselves from different institutional positions, supported the idea that imagination has great powers on the body and on the body and mind of others.

Seminar EHESS/CNRS organised by Elizabeth Claire (CNRS), Béatrice Delaurenti (EHESS), Roberto Poma (University Paris Est-Créteil) and Koen Vermeir (CNRS) ; with financial help of SPHERE.

Argument

The concept of imagination is today seen as as a legitimate object of study, having long been discredited by scientific research. However, in modern and contemporary literature, imagination is generally considered in a negative way, as a mental faculty that can cause disease, error, illusion or sin. By cons, its role was very important, because the imagination formed the necessary link between body and soul.
So that was the preferred place to act to perform bodily healing as well as spiritual. We would go against this idea of imagination by studying intellectual tradition and alternative and misunderstood practice. Since the XIIth and XIIIth centuries until the early XIXth century, thinkers and practitioners from a diverse set of disciplines, expressing themselves from different institutional positions, supported the idea that imagination has great powers on the body and on the body and mind of others.
Like last year, the seminar will work around texts in the manner of a workshop, and be joined to implement a collective work of discussion, analysis and comparison of sources over the long term.

It will take place on Fridays, 1pm –5 pm, et EHESS, Room 5, 105 bd Raspail, Paris 75006.

Programme

January 27th 2017

• 13:00–15:00 Robert Iliffe (Univ. of Oxford) : The place of the imagination in accounts of scientific creativity, 1620-1820.
• 15:00–17:00 Sorana Corneanu (Bucarest) : Logic Re-Disciplined : Joseph Glanvill on the Imagination and the Acts of the Intellect.

February 24th 2017

• 13:00–15:00 Guido Giglioni (Londres, Warburg Institute) : Le pouvoir de l’imagination dans le Marteau contre les sorcières.
• 15:00–17:00 Béatrice Delaurenti (EHESS) : Le pouvoir de l’imagination à distance : réception et transformations de la doctrine d’Avicenne sur la fascination.

March 24th 2017

• 13:00–15:00 Gaia Gubbini (Berlin, Freie Universität) : L’imagination, les fées et le merveilleux dans les Lais bretons.
• 15:00–17:00 Dominik Perler (Berlin, Humboldt-Universität) : Was Adam Prone to Error ? A Medieval Thought Experiment.

May 12th 2017

• 13:00–15:00 Manuel Quinon (Université Paris Diderot) : Université ésotérique et ésotérisme universitaire : la conception de l’imagination chez Henry Corbin (1907-1978) et Gilbert Durand (1921-2012).
• 15:00–17:00 Roberto Poma (UPEC) et Christian Delorenzo (UPEC) : L’homme enceint.

Contact

• elizabeth.claire (at) ehess.fr
• poma (at) u-pec.fr
• koen.vermeir (at) univ-paris-diderot.fr