"The Imagination then I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary Imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate: or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.
FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites. The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space; while it is blended with, and modified by that empirical phaenomenon of the will, which we express by the word Choice. But equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials ready made from the law of association." -from Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria
Now what I want to do is contextualize a couple of points made in Shai Tubali’s PN article, “Hannah Arendt and the Human Duty to Think”:
“Many complain nowadays that their thinking is too active. What they mean is they feel that their brain is chattering with itself too much; that there are too many thoughts of worry and distress, frustration and struggle, going on in their mind. They then try to quieten their stormy over-thinking through different methods of meditation or relaxation. Indeed, quietude in one’s mind, especially when life’s challenges are unbearably intense, sounds a very nice state to be in. However, Arendt’s reflections tell us the very opposite: that our thinking is often not active enough – that people tend to shut down the activity of right thinking and judging. In light of Arendt’s own thinking, it becomes clear that most of the time we are not really actively thinking, we are daydreaming. Daydreaming may be intense at times, yet it does not help us develop a thinking which leads us to wakefully engage with the world. Thinking as an act of gathering one’s mental forces in order to understand or to realize something for oneself, is a relatively rare phenomenon in peoples’ lives.”
And:
“Things become more complicated when we realize that cognitive ease is also associated with truthfulness, and that our telling right from wrong is too often guided by the hidden wish of the brain not to think too much about things. According to research, most of our judgments are made by the brain’s lazy system of reactive thinking, not at all by our capacity to deeply engage in consideration and thoughtful observation. Therefore the brain’s default position is that an easy answer is also a true answer, and that a quick judgment is a right judgment.”
This, of course, was in reference to Arendt’s observations on Nazism and the Nuremburg Trials and pretty much backs my sense of Avid Neiwert’s Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump –a book I highly recommend. Throughout it all, you get a sense of the role that fancy is playing in it all (that is as compared to imagination which would require the hicks to see things from the immigrant’s perspective (in that there is a kind of loose, instinct-based way of thinking on their part. Most notable was Neiwert’s point about how the hero and martyr archetypes play a major role in not only militia-type uprisings (such as Ruby Ridge), but mass shootings as well. In fact, the Alt-Right MO has become a notably useful model for criminologists for explaining many of the mass shootings we are experiencing today.
And we can see the genealogy and connection with Nazi Germany given the kind of ecstatic embrace of mythology (Think Wagner’s Ride of the Valkeries here (which was likely the main appeal of it to Heidegger and Jung.
(At the same time, as my respected peer and colleague, Lewis, pointed out to me: not all archetypes are bad or necessarily based on pure fancy. As Jung pointed out, in his attempt to pre-empt attacks that he was being less than scientific, many are rooted in our biological systems, most notably the brain. And in his defense, our minds (via the brain (are always acting in defense of our bodies.)
Where I depart with Arendt is her failure to recognize fancy as a steppingstone to imagination. We get to the point she wants us to be (imagination (by working our way beyond fancy which we can never truly escape. As Coleridge, his self, also said:
“It’s alright to build castles in the air. The point is to build foundations under them.”
There is simply no way of getting to imagination (or “thinking as compared to daydreaming” as Arendt put it (without working through the process of fancy.