Teaching Boethius on the Imagination
Boethius was a Christian philosopher. I regularly teach his Consolation of Philosophy as part of my literature classes because of something fascinating he wrote about the imagination.
He said imagining is a kind of knowing. Most of us don’t think of imagination this way. Usually, we associate it with making stuff up, not with learning and knowing, but I believe Boethius was right. Allow me to demonstrate.
I love the Okefenokee Swamp. I love hearing bull gators bellowing, unseen, in the early morning mists. I love the cypress trees with Spanish moss hanging down and swaying in a breeze. (If you look up into those cypress trees, you might see a barred owl staring back at you.) I love the smooth, black water, which so perfectly mirrors the sky that it can make a turtle at the surface of the water by your boat appear to be floating in the clouds. The water lilies, with their beautiful white flowers, were fascinating to me as a kid because water just rolls off of them, like beads of mercury.
Of course, there are also things about the swamp that I don’t like: mosquitoes in my ear, gnats in my eyes, muggy summer heat, and terrible lightning storms. On the whole, however, it is one of my favorite places on earth.
Now notice what your imagination has done, particularly if you have not been to the Okefenokee. I did not give you a video or a photo of the swamp. I gave you words on a page. Your eyes saw only little black letters, but your imagination turned them into images conveying real knowledge about the swamp, knowledge that you may not have had before. And that is what Boethius meant. Literature, from Homer to Tolkien, can give us real knowledge through our imagination.
“Tolkien?” someone might object. “But Middle Earth is not real.”
True. There is no Middle Earth. Sam never really “broke his back and heart” out of love for Mr. Frodo as he carried him up Mount Doom. But love is real. And so are courage, loyalty, and hope. When I read about Sam, exhausted but determined to help his beloved friend, it is my imagination that helps me understand these beautiful realities better, realities that have their ultimate source in God himself, and it does so by presenting them in a way that no other sort of knowledge does.
He said imagining is a kind of knowing. Most of us don’t think of imagination this way. Usually, we associate it with making stuff up, not with learning and knowing, but I believe Boethius was right. Allow me to demonstrate.
I love the Okefenokee Swamp. I love hearing bull gators bellowing, unseen, in the early morning mists. I love the cypress trees with Spanish moss hanging down and swaying in a breeze. (If you look up into those cypress trees, you might see a barred owl staring back at you.) I love the smooth, black water, which so perfectly mirrors the sky that it can make a turtle at the surface of the water by your boat appear to be floating in the clouds. The water lilies, with their beautiful white flowers, were fascinating to me as a kid because water just rolls off of them, like beads of mercury.
Of course, there are also things about the swamp that I don’t like: mosquitoes in my ear, gnats in my eyes, muggy summer heat, and terrible lightning storms. On the whole, however, it is one of my favorite places on earth.
Now notice what your imagination has done, particularly if you have not been to the Okefenokee. I did not give you a video or a photo of the swamp. I gave you words on a page. Your eyes saw only little black letters, but your imagination turned them into images conveying real knowledge about the swamp, knowledge that you may not have had before. And that is what Boethius meant. Literature, from Homer to Tolkien, can give us real knowledge through our imagination.
“Tolkien?” someone might object. “But Middle Earth is not real.”
True. There is no Middle Earth. Sam never really “broke his back and heart” out of love for Mr. Frodo as he carried him up Mount Doom. But love is real. And so are courage, loyalty, and hope. When I read about Sam, exhausted but determined to help his beloved friend, it is my imagination that helps me understand these beautiful realities better, realities that have their ultimate source in God himself, and it does so by presenting them in a way that no other sort of knowledge does.
Recent
Archive
2025
May
June
July
August
September
October
No Comments