A World Not of this World

The Reality of Images and Imagination

Professor Alfredo Ferrarin (Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy)

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English

Bloomsbury Academic
11 December 2025

Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge; Philosophy of mind; Philosophy: aesthetics; Cognitivism, cognitive theory

Is an image merely an inferior copy of the actual thing? Is imagination simply an escape from reality? In both cases, Alfredo Ferrarin thinks not and, breaking classical assumptions that images are exclusively reproductions and imagination is a secondary faculty, this book provides a rich account of what images really are and what imagination can do.

Ferrarin begins by examining and disputing several commonplaces on images and imagination, both in everyday language and in many traditional philosophical approaches.

With a lightness of touch throughout, he brings a broad range of thinkers into dialogue, from Aristotle, Kant, and Freud to Husserl, Wittgenstein, Sartre. He then proceeds to examine the twofold nature of every image – the image itself and what it is an image of – before distinguishing between natural, artificial, mental, and memory images. The final chapters probe the cognitive functions of imagination; the notions of fiction, play, and literary creation; and imagination in relation to praxis and the social world.

Comparing and relating how we conceptualize imagination to how we think about the concept of reality, Ferrarin contends that, whilst it can be, imagination is not always a flight from reality – it is also a way of figuring out what is real.

By: Professor Alfredo Ferrarin (Scuola Normale Superiore Italy)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 238mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 26mm
Weight: 680g
ISBN: 9781350544789
ISBN 10: 1350544787
Pages: 360
Publication Date: 11 December 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Undergraduate , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Images and Imagination? 1. The Power and the Mediums of the Image 2. Perception, Image and Imagination 3. A Typology of Images 4. Imagining and Thinking 5. The Reality of Representation: Fantasy, Play, Fiction 6. The Theatre of the Soul: The Practical Imagination Bibliography Index

Alfredo Ferrarin is Professor of Philosophy at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy. His previous titles include: Hegel and Aristotle (2001), The Powers of Pure Reason (2015) and Thinking and the I (2019).

Reviews for A World Not of this World: The Reality of Images and Imagination

In this brilliant and innovative book, Alfredo Ferrarin presents a novel conception of imagination. Through a series of masterful philosophical readings that venture into poetry, film, drama, geometry, and physics, he shows that imagination needs to be both reimagined and rethought, not only as a faculty concerned with images, but also as practical imagination, connected to desire and action, and, in this capacity, intrinsically related to thinking. * Dmitri Nikulin, Agnes Heller Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social Research, USA *