When was imagination invented?

The word "imagination" crops up repeatedly in the intellectual writings of the eighteenth century.

Before the eighteenth century, imagination had not been invented.

Oh, to be sure, the King James Version of the Bible uses the word "imagination" a total of 14 times. In every case except one, "imagination" is used in a negative sense, meaning stubbornness of heart, or self-willfulness against God.

But that is not how "imagination" was used in the eighteenth century.

The eighteenth century invented a faculty of imagination.

In other words, the imagination as a distinct power of the mind, a unique and autonomous ability to IMAGE realities that do not exist, but that can be made to exist by human ingenuity.

Here is the philosopher Immanuel Kant writing in 1790:

"The imagination … in its role as a productive cognitive power is very mighty when it creates, as it were, another nature out of the material that actual nature gives it...."

The imagination, then, is the power we use to create new natures.

To create new natures.

We can take the material "actual" nature gives us ... and (quoting Kant again): "... process that material into something quite different, namely, into something that surpasses nature...”

What was happening in the eighteenth century that spawned this notion? Well...

1. A growing leisure class with time on its hands. It was at this time that the concept of "fine" art emerged: "fine" art is beautiful precisely because it has no practical use.

2. An Enlightenment mindset convinced that the only purpose of nature is for it to be harnessed for man's physical comforts.

3. The dawn of the Machine to make (2) possible, so that the leisure class can have more time to enjoy (1).

This is a serious question largely unaddressed by post-Enlightenment efforts at Christian theology:

How do we distinguish between the still small voice of the Holy Spirit ... and the powerful voice of this new faculty we have invented for ourselves...

... this faculty of IMAGINATION that can create entirely new natures out of the nature that God gives to us?

Logos2Go

"Imagination" used negatively in Scripture (KJV): Genesis 6.5; 8.21; Deuteronomy 29.19; 31.21; Jeremiah 3.17; 7.24; 9.14; 11.8; 13.10; 16.12; 18.12; 23.17; Luke 1.51

"Imagination" used positively (KJV): 1 Chronicles 29.18 O LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, our fathers, keep this for ever in the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of thy people, and prepare their heart unto thee:

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment (1790), translated by Werner Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1987). Section 49, 314.