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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

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Book I Chapter 58

Chapter 58 · Imagination and the criterion

On imagination and the criterion.²⁰⁵³

1.1 · Imagination and light

⟨Didymus.⟩

Aristotle. Imagination is a certain affection and movement of perception in activity. It takes its name from one of the senses, sight; ⟨for⟩ appearing derives its designation from light.²⁰⁵⁴

1.2 · Extension beyond sight

This belongs properly to sight, but extends ⟨to⟩ all the senses and the movements of thought; for these too are called imaginations by the same name.²⁰⁵⁵

1.3 · Intellect and perception as criteria

The criteria for knowledge of these things are intellect and perception: intellect for intelligible things, perception for perceptible things. For perception could not judge the universal, nor intellect the particular. Everything is constituted from these and through these.²⁰⁵⁶

2053.Heeren restored this heading from Photius p. 112b35; it is absent from FP. Phantasia denotes the experience or capacity of having appearances or images, rather than only creative invention. The criterion is the means of judging or distinguishing the objects of knowledge.

2054.The supplied attribution identifies Didymus, Epitome of Physics, fragment 16, Diels p. 456. The editor supplies gar, for. The report connects phantasia, imagination or appearance, with phainesthai, to appear, and phaos, light. The English states the ancient explanation without presenting it as an independently established etymology.

2055.The source supplies eis, to. This looks back to the connection with appearing and light; the compressed wording does not fully distinguish the name’s origin from the capacity’s range. Homōnymōs indicates use of the same name for the further cases. The translation retains the extension to thought as well as to the other senses.

2056.Nous is intellect; to katholou is the universal and to kath’ hekaston the particular or individual case. The concluding everything is compressed and its scope is not made explicit. It is translated closely rather than expanded into a further theory of how perception and intellect cooperate. This completes chapter 58.