Human Development and the Imagination (eBook)

Introduction

“To determine where you’re going, you have to know where you’ve been.”5

An important book, or series of books, is one that tells a story. An important story is one that, eventually, tells itself. This is a story about the human development of one’s emotions. In this story, as in any story, historical leavings, current circumstances, and imaginative projections collide and interchange, often in bewildering cycles. As a consequence, I have relied upon a broad array of scholars,6 principally from the psychological, philosophical, and theological disciplines, to participate in and temper its telling. However, it is only through a story’s substantive content and varietal forms that a story tells itself. I have selected the capacity of the imagination to enclose and monitor the initial array of content about human development. The rationale for this decision unwinds in the following sequence.

Imagination is the first moment of consciousness; and consciousness is one’s consistent, relatively accurate assessment of reality, and oneself as part of that reality. Consciousness begins in the womb; wherein the fetus is responsive to internal, maternal, and external stimuli.7 Consequently, it is during this gestation period that the fetus “first imagines the real.” Upon birth and thereafter, the infant melds his/her imaginative gestalt with the bits and pieces of sensory output. As the child matures, his/her development links genetic constitution to the variable patterns of family nurturance, loving care, and ecological contingencies. When optimal, these interfaces affect a balance between the imaginative élan and sensory functions, facilitating development that is responsive to the present and envisioning of the future.

Behaviorally, human development proceeds from psychological through philosophical and theological levels of consciousness. Historically, however, knowledge relative to human development initiates in the discipline of philosophy and then moves judiciously fore and aft. Philosophy is the seedbed of all formal knowledge, inclusive of its several sub-types, that is, ontology, cosmology, epistemology, logic, rational psychology, ethics, physics, politics, poetics, rhetoric, and so on. Of the three disciplines, only philosophy shares boundaries with the other two. As a consequence, only philosophy can move forward and back along the triune knowledge spectrum with facility. One of the recurring themes of this work is that the respective disciplines of psychology, philosophy, and theology are structurally wedded8; that is, psychology is the floor of philosophy; and philosophy is simultaneously the ceiling of psychology and the floor of theology.

Human development is a daunting enigma, which in the approaches of most scholars to their developmental schemata starts too late and stops too soon. Traditionally, these schemata have been artificially constrained within the boundaries of each discipline, bestowing degrees of partisanship to their respective advocates, consistent with “inside the box” perspectives. Such perspectives are comforting and conformable for their agents—but are unlikely to break through the boundaries of their respective disciplines. More inclusive approaches to human development would seem to require an expanded and expanding continuum of knowledge concordances across these three domains. Such approaches are consistent with “outside the box” perspectives. I have designated Bernard Lonergan, S.J. as the flag bearer for these latter scholars in search of a transcendent developmental framework—that is, one that can continually go beyond its previous possible limits. One might presume that the materials in these volumes follow one another in linear, lockstep fashion. Indeed, it is adjudged that most scholarly texts, with few exceptions, unwind in this more preferred pattern. Bernard Lonergan states that such texts adhere to the dictum that “...between the covers of a single book there must be a single coherent set of statements.”9 While Lonergan does not dispute that such texts are worthy contributions to the scholarly literatures, he argues in ringing counterpoint that books may also be written from a moving viewpoint that contains not a single set of statements, but a sequence of related sets of coherent statements.10 His signature work, Insight, is testimony to this claim.

Note that a moving viewpoint is versatile. It is characterized by patterns of linearity, reversals, and even instances of intransitives from time to time. The moving viewpoint is therefore the appropriate literary vehicle to launch the imagination as a developmental predicate. For the imagination is a confounding human capacity. It breaks boundaries and violates rules with reckless abandon. It is not easily tethered; and if so constrained, loses its zest, becoming but a pale semblance of itself. In this series about the imagination, it is the imagination that spurs its digressions, is the vital source of its exercises in whimsy, the droll collector of its anecdotes, and the avant-garde author of its serendipitous excursions. The imagination is a search engine or agent for human consciousness and the intellect. Given the above as prologue, the sections of this book are readied for disclosure.

Volume I. Chapters 1 to 4 bring the concept of the imagination front and center as I trace it from its historic origins in Hellenic Philosophy, through the field of Philosophical Ethics up through more contemporary times. In doing so, these chapters provide the first of many interfaces between the imagination and the process of human development. At this juncture, in Chapters 5 to 14, the study of the imagination reduces to Psychology’s domain, and is carried forward as the Life and Times of the Aesthetic Imagination. These chapters promote a psychologically founded understanding of the imagination, consistent with the tenets of cognitive science. The chapters conjoin, in evolving scope, the imagination and the developmental process. In so doing this process sequences a major developmental postulate and ten sub-postulates; these chapters enclose various developmental markers, such as the “Child as Creative Picture-Maker,” “Modal Logic,” “the Narrative Self,” and “Style.”

Volume II. Chapters 1 to 17 comprise Philosophy’s Domain: The Life and Times of the Moral Imagination. Within this section, the viewpoint of study shifts to the domain of Philosophy, and emphasizes the developmental nuances of the Moral Imagination. These chapters encompass a major serendipitous excursion wherein I critique a more contemporary philosophical movement known as postmodernism, which negates all philosophical truths and the imagination. This movement is unique in the annals of philosophy insofar as it goes nowhere and, like the mythical ouroboras, devours its own tail. These chapters also provide a substantive response to postmodernism by select philosophers, such as Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, and includes reflections on personal values, imagination, morality, and conscience in the service of moral development.

Volume III contains Chapters 1 to 7; Chapters 8 to 13; the Postscript; Appendices; and the Epilogue. Chapters 1 to 7 are Theology’s Domain: The Life and Times of the Religious Imagination—Inclusive of the Spires of Mystical Conversion. These chapters carry Lonergan’s moving viewpoint into the theological domain and illustrate the actions of the Religious Imagination. These chapters also provide a serendipitous excursion into the mystical experience and its relationship to the developmental spectrum. Chapters 8 to 13 contain reflections after the journey from Volumes 1 to 3, inclusive of the dynamics of Poetry, Literary Techniques, and Present-Day examples of Human Development.

There is no prescribed way of getting from the beginning to the end of this series. As with all books, it depends upon the reader. If one is of a conservative bent, starting at the beginning with Chapters one through four might be best. In these chapters, one will encounter materials that envelop the area of Philosophical Ethics, my chosen beginning prior to submitting to the allurement of serendipity. If one is of a liberal bent, perhaps more adventurous,11 one might take license to pick and choose what is propitious to read, and in no particular order. If one is in the mid-space between these two ideologies, and searching for foundation, I might suggest a start at the given front of the book led by the table of contents and introductory materials. This would accommodate generally the “less-informed” reader of the forthcoming materials who would be better served following a more directive path.12

The mid-space reader may more easily wend his or her way through the Scylla of the one and the Charybdis of the other; but the adventurous reader would be following the somewhat tortured trail I’ve taken in assembling the bits and pieces of this book. Such readers are a curious mixture of the others. They freely shift from one pattern to another and, accordingly, glean a deeper understanding of how...