Un échange entre Augustin et Nebridius sur la phantasia (Ep. 6-7)

In Letter 6 of Augustine's correspondence, Nebridius asks his friend two questions on imagination: Is memory able to exist without phantasia? Does phantasia not get its images from itself rather than from the senses? These questions arise from some texts by Plotinus and Porphyry, who referred to the...

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Bibliographic Details
Author:Emmanuel Bermon
Published: S.n., s.l., 2009
Volume:72
Pages:199-223
Language:French
Periodical:Archives de philosophie
Number:2
Format:Article
Topic:- Biography > Relations and Sources > Students & Correspondents > Nebridius
- Biography > Relations and Sources > Platonism - Neo-platonism > Plotinus > Plotinus > Sensitive knowledge
- Biography > Relations and Sources > Platonism - Neo-platonism > Porphyry
- Works > Epistulae > [Epistulae - numérotées] > Ep. 6 (=Quaestiones expositae contra paganos VI)
- Works > Epistulae > [Epistulae - numérotées] > Ep. 7
- Works > Epistulae > [Études sur plusieurs lettres] > [Epistulae 3-14 (à Nebridius)]
- Doctrine > Man > [Doctrine de la connaissance] > [Connaissance sensible (le rêve)] > [Rêve-songe-imagination-l'imaginaire-vision(s)]
- Doctrine > Man > [Doctrine de la connaissance] > Memory > Memory - memoria > [Mémoire et image]
Status:Active
Description
Summary:In Letter 6 of Augustine's correspondence, Nebridius asks his friend two questions on imagination: Is memory able to exist without phantasia? Does phantasia not get its images from itself rather than from the senses? These questions arise from some texts by Plotinus and Porphyry, who referred to the beginning of Aristotle's De memoria and the famous Aristotelian claim that mind does not think without an image. Nebridius argues that thought has to use an image, either of a body or of a word, as a "vehicle" or as a "mirror". Augustine, for his part, goes against the very principle of such a depenence of intellect on imagination in the case of man. The way he radically denies images any constructive role in the process of knowledge makes him original within Neoplatonism.

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