Philosophy Light with a Compelling Call to Arms for Educators

Warnock, Mary
Imagination & Time
Blackwell Publishers, 1994

During the past two years teaching artists, partnering educators, and the leadership and staff of Lincoln Center Institute have been exploring the concept of imagination as a central value in education. As an LCI teaching artist I have participated in some of these explorations—verbal and embodied, where we have discovered and re-discovered the role of imagination in the kind of teaching and learning we do in partnership with teachers in the classroom. At the base of some of these interesting explorations around the concept of imagination is an evolving understanding of what imagination is, and what it has meant to generations before. You don’t need a PhD to understand the role, influence, and evolution of the concept of imagination in Western philosophy over the last three centuries. In Imagination & Time, Mary Warnock presents them in plain English in a simple and direct manner.

The first four chapters, the meat of the book, offers a synopsis of the past three hundred years of Western philosophical thought centering around the concept of imagination from philosophers dating back to Hume and Kant, two often cited eighteenth-century sources in this book, to Collingwood and Merleau-Ponty, often cited here from the twentieth century. In these chapters you’ll be led through a historical interpretation of the nature of imagination, its function in human existence, and its role in creating meaning. 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. Read these chapters as a great historical introduction to the conversation on the role of imagination in Western society.

When exploring a range of concepts attributed to one word, imagination, finding a simple explanation isn’t so easy. Warnock again utilizes a straightforward approach to simplify the idea: “The function of imagination is to think about what is not in front of your eyes” (p. 108).

Warnock’s own agenda is revealed as the book progresses and will be of interest to educators seeking perspective and inspiration on educating the whole child, not just teaching toward standards, and students of education and educational philosophy as food for thought. She draws on the historical perspectives presented in the first four chapters together with her own compelling philosophical argument to build a call for the moral education of students, stressing what education should emphasize in order to create a responsive and moral individual in a balanced and progressive society. She advocates for imagination as the most important educational goal, with the teaching of history a central part in a child’s education. Examining the present and past imbues students with a sense of continuity toward the future, allows for the sympathetic identification with others, and instills a sense that life is worthwhile and meaningful. “If we can educate a child’s imagination,” Warnock asserts, “we will give him a place in time…allow him to stretch his sense of present back into the past…(and) also free him to contemplate the future, his own, and that of the world” (p. 189).

The focus of the second half of the book may be just a bit outside of the purview of the Institute. But the idea of educating for responsive morality is certainly not out of place for an institution based on the work of thinkers like Maxine Greene and John Dewey. And this latter portion of Imagination & Time is like icing on the cake to the philosophical introduction to the concept of imagination, which might truly form the basis for some very interesting explorations of what the concept might mean for the Institute’s future and that of our students.

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