"For he should not have the monstrous form" Imagination and Evil in Jacob Boehme's mystical anthropology

During the complicated reception history of the German mystic philosopher Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) it was asserted that according to Boehme evil is due to fantasy or that in fact all evil is a false imagination. In the light of Boehme s metaphysics, one could however wonder whether his understanding of imagination as the origin of evil, could or does indeed fit in with our possible present-day intuitions about that assumption to the point that Boehme s thinking was early on seen as the true origin of the specific character of German philosophy. Boehme was already dubbed the Philosopus Teutonicus by his contemporaries, a title which was for instance adopted by no other than Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel who called Boehme the first German philosopher. Boehme was still perceived as seminal by 20th century intellectuals and philosophers such as Berdyaev, Koyré, Buber and Heidegger.The principal objective of the present dissertation was to investigate how Boehme conceived evil to be a result of imagination. As Boehme s thought, not in the least his reflections on evil and his (putative) conception of imagination, knows a vast, but inconsistent reception, it was of first importance to retrieve what Boehme primarily wanted to convey by his writings. Only in the light of such a characterization of Boehme s thought, it could be determined what imagination means and what its function is according to Boehme. This finally allowed to ascertain how Boehme precisely conceived evil as resulting from imagination.Therefore the structure of the thesis is mainly determined by the semantic exploration of what imagination means to Boehme. The three chapters in Part 1 denote the theoretical movement from imagination as an idea over imagination as a plastic force towards imagination as embodiment. This transitional process is firstly discussed as a theogony (the process of becoming of God) from the Divine Wisdom to the harmonious embodiment in eternal nature. The structure is closely linked to the evolution of the theoretical concept. The introductory part roughly sketches the complex reception of Boehme particularly with regard to his understanding of the correlation between imagination and evil. It allows the reader to get acquainted with the vast and diverse interpretations of some of Boehme s concepts which sometimes, e.g. in the exploitation of imagination by the Romantics, might be widely diverging from Boehme s original intents. This part searches what Boehme wanted to achieve with his writings and concludes that mysticism is the main genre of his thought.The first chapter deals with imagination as the ideal, to be understood as relating to the divine ideas in the Divine Wisdom as well as to the utmost perfection. The Divine Wisdom or imagination serves as the paradigm for the perfect human imagination which orients or should orient the human will and which should be equal to the genuine understanding (Verstand). The ideal imagination is as such also related to the non-ground (Ungrund) which Boehme identifies as a will which exists before every creation and being, but which by informing itself through imagination becomes the ground of nature and existence and also of God as far as He is called God .The second chapter deals with imagination understood as the intermediary power which substantializes the ideal into a concrete perceptible reality and which allows the world to participate in the ideal and vice versa. Boehme will identify this intermediary power with the tincture (Tinktur) through which he emphasizes the plasticity of imagination which coagulates the spiritual in a certain form but can also alter realities for good or for worse.The third and final chapter of Part 1 scrutinizes how the eternal nothing can reveal itself through infinite, eternal and finite, transient nature. If imagination is understood as a process of image-formation and embodiment, then the focus is here on imagination as the resulting product or body. The body of nature is, according to Boehme, constituted by seven eternal imaginations or qualities as the forms or figures which express the ideal imagination. Their co-eternal interdependency determines whether the nature they embody is eternal or transient.In Part 2 the human imagination and its function within anthropogeny (or human self-formation) are analysed proceeding from the awareness that Boehme conceives of man as a microcosm.The fourth chapter focuses on imagination within a voluntaristic context. Imagination orients man s will, which as a secondary will could only come into existence if a primordial pre-ontological freedom or will is assumed as its source. Freedom and free will presuppose a certain determination. Eventually the only morally allowed option for the human will is its own resignation, which involves an abandonment of the self-will through a will oriented by genuine imagination, that is through a will impressed by or impregnated by Divine Wisdom. In the fifth chapter the human epistemological equivalent of the Divine Wisdom, viz. the understanding, as opposed to the illusive knowledge or reason is discussed. The wrongful exertion of reason, Vernunft, is an illusory fantasy (Phantasey, a term mostly pejorative in Boehme s peculiar nomenclature) when it is taken for the sole provider of knowledge, while genuine understanding, Verstand, implies imagination. The latter mode of knowledge requires an annulment of the self-will and the illusory self-image. Moreover faith itself is identified with the true transforming power of the imagination. The transforming power of the imagination directly affects the image-formation and man s concrete embodiment. The sixth chapter focuses on Boehme s perception of the human body. He denotes the actual human body as monstrous and evil imagination (or in casu quo fantasy) as an agent of teratology. The body is a sign of the orientation of the human will and of the human self-understanding. As the eventual perceptible product of the imagination, it is the deteriorated pendant of the image reflected by the mirror of the divine imagination or wisdom. Boehme will scaffold this stance by Paracelsian biological understanding of human ontogenesis and gynaecology through which he conveys his mystical message that man s imagination ought to be as passive as possible in order not to generate monstrosities and in order to let the human self be constituted by divine imagination.The ensuing conclusion is that Boehme s conception of imagination as an origin of evil (and his complex understanding of both terms) results in his claim that human beings should not have their actual form, which is perceived as monstrous.In a final essay Boehme s present-day relevance is probed into, starting from the question if Boehme s understanding of imagination as the origin of evil, fits in with our possible present-day intuitions about that concerned assumption. The answer to that latter question is not really positive, as in his mind Boehme s assertions about the imagination have to be taken literally, i.e. as somehow actually and actively transposing the imagined into reality . However, throughout Boehme s mystical speculations on imagination and evil, however, the significant philosophical questions come to the fore what human beings essentially are and what they imagine themselves to be, explaining his aforementioned appeal to twentieth century thinkers like Berdyaev and Koyré and through them toward further ramifications into modern philosophy, since the manifest portrayal of man is somehow always an ideological or imaginary construct.nrpages: 364status: publishe