Imagination and Time

All religion and much philosophy has been concerned with the contrast between the ephemeral and the eternal. Human beings have always sought ways to overcome time, and to prove that death is not the end. This book consists then in an exploration of certain closely related ideas: personal identity, time, history and our commitment to the future, and the role of imagination in life. Preface.

1. Introduction: The Inner and the Outer World.

2. Imagination and the Idea of Genius.

3. Imaginative Interpretations.

4. The Symbolic.

5. Stories.

6. Personal Identity.

7. Autobiography.

8. The Future.

9. Consequences.

Index.

“Warnock cites philosophers next to poets, writers of literature next to writers of history, illuminating the ongoing discussion of imagination and the role that imagination plays in the human struggle to understand ourselves and the world around us.” (Resource Center Blog) Mary Warnock was born in Winchester and educated at St Swithun's School and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She was Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at St Hugh's College, Oxford for fifteen years, and Headmistress of the Oxford High School for six. She was Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge from 1984 till 1991, and became a Life Peer in 1985. She has chaired various Government committees, and written books on philosophy and on education. She is married to Sir Geoffrey Warnock, and they live in Wiltshire. All religion and much philosophy has been concerned with the contrast between the ephemeral and the eternal. Human beings have always sought ways to overcome time, and to prove that death is not the end. This book consists then in an exploration of certain closely related ideas: personal identity, time, history and our commitment to the future, and the role of imagination in life.

Warnock argues in particular that the notion of personal immortality, as it appears in Christian dogma, cannot be taken literally. Nevertheless, as a metaphor, immortality may illuminate both our relation with the past, our understanding of the present and our responsibility for the future. In the course of the argument, philosophical themes of personal identity, of history, and of values, are explored, as well as the cognitive content of the imagination.