research in phenomenology 44 (2014) 161–169 Research

in
Phenomenology

brill.com/rp

Topic: The Elemental

∵
Mathematical and Elemental Coordinates:
The Role of Imagination

Bernard Freydberg
Duquesne University
bdfphil@yahoo.com

Abstract

Both in Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental (2000) and in his very recent
Logic of Imagination: The Expanse of the Elemental (2012), John Sallis enacts a reconfigu-
ration of the relationship of geometry to elementology, which might be regarded more
generally as a rethinking of the relation of mathematics to philosophy. The paper will
trace this reconfiguration in two ways: (1) as it lies present but concealed in the history of
philosophy, for example, in Descartes’ so-called “dualism” and in Kant’s pure productive
imagination, and (2) in its present creative evolution in fractal geometry, as Sallis inter-
prets it. Sallis draws together the mathematical affinity with a fundamental aesthetic
drive, likening mathematical patterns to choreographic ones. I conclude by following
this strain as it points to specific dance companies, and to my own sense of aesthetic
homecoming as presented in my Imagination in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason.

Keywords

philosophy – mathematics – Sallis – geometry – Descartes – Kant 

In both Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental (2000) and his very
recent Logic of Imagination: The Expanse of the Elemental (2012), John Sallis

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/15691640-12341283

162 freydberg

enacts a reconfiguration of the relationship of geometry to elementology,

which might be regarded more generally as a rethinking of the relation of
mathematics to philosophy. In this paper, I will attempt to trace the develop-
ment up to and including Sallis’ conception in order to demonstrate the way
our tradition contains within it untapped resources, and how in this instance
both a way of access and an original development can arise. To draw on a
­central theme in Force of Imagination, remonstration and origination entail
one another, and are as far as possible from opposition.
The locus classicus of geometric coordinates occurs in La Geometrie, an
appendix to Descartes’ Discourse [Discours] on the Method of Rightly Conducting
One’s Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences. Although Sallis does not
make the express connection, a significant relation occurs between the two
titles. The recasting of a logic that not only can but also must sustain contradic-
tions is an abiding theme throughout the book. That is to say, logic thought
back in a more originary sense to the Greek logos consists of recourse to the
way logos had been thought before Aristotle formalized it into logic as gov-
erned precisely by that law. Sallis explores the anterior sense of logos especially
as it occurs in Heraclitus—its most common sense is simply speech. Logos
does not become codified—one might say calcified—as reason, once again
until Aristotle.
But “speech” is precisely the ordinary sense of “discours” in French. There
can be little doubt that for Descartes it means “reason,” thus the title can be
reread as “reasoning about the pathway (μέθοδος) of reasoning rightly.” This
self-reflexivity characterizes this peculiarly dialogical work, including its won-
derful Socratic moment at the conclusion of his admittedly excellent educa-
tion that all he learned was how ignorant he was. As is well known—perhaps
too well known for comfort—is that for Descartes reason consists of the ability
to distinguish the true from the false and that the scope of reason’s clear and
distinct knowledge—clarity and distinctness being the guarantor of truth—is
limited to three interconnected items: (1) my thinking self; (2) God as the ratio-
nal order of the universe; and (3) the ideas of pure mathematics. Intelligibility,
knowability by reason alone, is the standard. Anything that is the product of
the senses or the imagination is ruled out.
However, a close inspection of the ideas of pure mathematics reveals that
the supposed dualism of res cogitans and res extensa evaporates. Ultimately,
this dualism reduces to two dimensions of res cogitans and, thus, is a division
by and for res cogitans. Res extensa consists entirely of lines and algebraic func-
tions. The so-called “body” that is distinct from the soul by virtue of its exten-
sion is merely a geometric body far, far removed from human flesh or flesh of
any kind. Descartes can only say of our experience of pain and pleasure that
they are ultimately modes of pure intellect:

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for certainly, these feelings of thirst, hunger, pain, and so forth, are noth-
ing other than certain confused modes of thinking, arising from the
union and, so to speak, fusion of the mind with the body.1

In this light, if we are to talk sense concerning a genuine dualism of mind and
body, we must regard the body in the sense that we usually understand it as
most unusual, i.e., as the radically other. I will only suggest in passing that, on
the one side, Spinoza closes this gap by absorbing all into the unity of God as
the one substance, intelligible, and that Hume exploits the gap, on the other,
with his epoch-making distinction into the differentiation between relations
of ideas and matters of fact, with analytic geometry belonging to the former.
What might be called the history of logos as well as of Cartesian coordinates
takes a decisive turn in the thought of Kant, with the insight into a pure imagi-
nation. While it is clear that Kant works within the sensible/intelligible distinc-
tion, his thought drives it beyond anything that came before. If Spinoza
resolved Cartesian dualism into the monism of God as perfect pure reason,
Kant moved the discourse away from pure reason and into the scope of imagi-
nation. Imagination rather than reason becomes the function of unity; far
from being pregiven somehow, unity must be achieved. The act by which unity
is achieved is called synthesis—syn-thesis—putting together:

Synthesis in general, as we shall hereafter see, is the mere result of the

power of imagination [Einbildungskraft], a blind but indispensible func-
tion of the soul, without which we should have no knowledge whatso-
ever, but of which we are scarcely ever conscious. To bring this synthesis
to concepts is a function which belongs to the understanding, and it is
through this function of the understanding that we first obtain knowl-
edge properly so-called.2

For Kant, philosophical knowledge arises from concepts, while mathematical

knowledge arises from construction of concepts. By construction, he means
exhibition in pure intuition, i.e., pure space and time. The procedure according
to which this construction takes place—and this will be the procedure that
will become creatively transformed in Sallis’ work—is schematization. “The
schema is in itself always a product of imagination” (A140, B179). Of schemati-
zation, Kant writes that it is “an art concealed in the depths of the human soul,

1 Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Michael Moriarty (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2008), 57.
2 All translations are from Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965), here A78, B103.

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whose real activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow us to discover, and to
have open to our gaze” (A141, B181–82).
With respect to mathematical coordinates, we deal directly with neither the
concept nor the image, but with the schema—it is the schema that makes the
image possible. The Critique of Pure Reason treats Euclidean geometry alone—
there simply was no other. “Our pure sensible concepts” were the same ones
with which Spinoza was confronted, the figures such as squares, triangles, etc.
“No image could ever be adequate to the concept of a triangle in general” (A141,
B180). This is because any image would have to exclude two of the three pos-
sibilities contained in the concept (i.e. equilateral, isosceles, or scalene). When
we prove, for example, that the angles of a triangle, any triangle, are equal to a
right angle, it is the schema that we are sighting.
Such a construction is pure—this cannot be emphasized enough. Both the
concept and the procedure governing its representation derive from the
togetherness, the gathering, of understanding and pure intuition. This gather-
ing is precisely what Kant calls transcendental logic. Insofar as understanding
and pure intuition are brought together—synthesized—one can call it anach-
ronistically, but not only anachronistically—logic of imagination. By taking up
this locution in his title—and in Sallis’ text it soon becomes evident that the
“of” is both subjective genitive and objective genitive—we are presented with
a most provocative reinterpretation of the Kantian relation of mathematics to
philosophy.
It is clearly not enough merely to replace Cartesian coordinates extended in
a Newtonian fashion (divine sensoria) with fire, water, sky, and earth and to
claim that these are more originary “coordinates” than the geometric ones
used by Kant—or even those non-Euclidean coordinates that form the basis of
other geometries such as Lobachevskian and Riemannian. What is perhaps
most surprising in Sallis’ elementology is his preservation of the systematic
relationship between mathematics and philosophy that has obtained since
Plato—in fact, this relation may even be more intimate than in Plato or Kant.
A detailed account of what might be called anterior coordination occurs at
the beginning of Chapter 5 of Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental.
The account takes its departure from sensible things. A sensible thing can
show itself as itself by virtue of what he calls “a proprietal self-relation that is
distinctively sensible.”3 In what does such a relation consist? Sallis calls it “the

3 John Sallis, Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2000), 123.

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secret strength of the thing.”4 That is to say, in its self-showing it withdraws; it

has the power to keep itself in reserve.
Instead of mathematical coordinates as these are usually understood, Sallis
speaks of horizons, both lateral and peripheral, both of which are gathered
around the image as which the thing shines forth. The lateral horizons give the
thing depth, flesh. Peripheral horizons provide the thing with a setting within
which it shows itself as it is.

By being installed within its horizons the self-showing thing . . . comes . . . 

to show itself as itself [such that] the duplicity of the image is resolved
and the adherence to the image of the thing . . .  as the very shining of the
thing, is resolved.5

∵
Logic of imagination is neither a logic of propositions nor of quantifiers nor of
functions/variables nor of copulas. Rather, a logic of imagination has schemata
as its primary and primal features and schematization as its primary procedure.
However, Sallis’ sense of schema transforms the Kantian notion: whereas the
schemata were representations that linked an intellectual region (the catego-
ries) with the sensible region of pure intuition, for Sallis the anteriority of the
schemata has them function as the spacing of imagination, the opening of that
space within which sense can occur at all:

Though there is an intimate link, schemata are not identical either with
space or with spacing. Rather, a schema is like a geometrical figure in that
it encloses and determines a certain space. It is even more like a figure in
dancing, which can either precede the actual dance so as to prescribe
the . . . movements of the dancer or first be realized only in the dance
itself. So it is with a schema, which is both a figure reenacted, hence
memorial, and a figure put in operation as if on no basis, that is, origi-
narily. In this sense, there are contrary movements in the very constitu-
tion of schemata.6

4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., 124.
6 John Sallis, Logic of Imagination: The Expanse of the Elemental (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2012), 165.

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What can be the relation of the spacing of imagination—and once again, the
genitive goes both ways—to the space opened thereby? If it is proper to speak
of coordinates in this context, Sallis speaks of fractal geometry. In its most
basic sense, fractals in mathematics consist of self-iterating systems. In nature,
we find them in such small phenomena as fern leafs, and such large ones as
mountains and clouds. It is also used to determine coastlines and bodies of
water. One could say, at least analogically, that fractal geometry is a second-
order phenomenon, dependent for its very sense on the anterior spacing that
opens up a horizon.
However, the status—if it is proper to employ that term in this context—of
the relation between geometry and philosophy requires another interpreta-
tion that accords with the logic of imagination. Perhaps “reorientation” would
be more precise in this context. For Kant, non-contradiction is the conditio sine
qua non of truth—that is, it is a negative condition, a necessary but hardly a
sufficient condition. Although no one before him grasped this in precisely
those terms, it is clear at least in Leibniz and in Hume—Kant’s most immedi-
ate precursors—that they understood this matter thoroughly although they
addressed it very differently. Given the sensible/intelligible distinction that
served as an implicit and unchallenged point of departure for both of them
(and for Kant as well), the directions they took led to results that might be
called (retrospectively—it is no great feat to predict the outcome of anything
after it has taken place) inevitably at odds with one another.
Although this will be no surprise, I repeat it because of its bearing upon
Sallis’ project: For Leibniz, intellect and sense are homogeneous; their differ-
ence is a difference in degree, not in kind. For Hume, the difference is heteroge-
neous. This accounts for his result—at least in my view—of employing the
sensible/intelligible distinction in order to undermine it and ultimately to shat-
ter it. Ironically, in my view all that remains of human knowledge strictly speak-
ing in Hume’s thought are unconnected relations of ideas. This virtual
epistemological nihilism that is the consequence of his philosophizing not only
does not depress him but also—again in my view—contributes to his unflap-
pable cheerfulness. It also leads both doctrinally and substantively to the
notion of a productive imagination that is always already at work, but at work in
the dark, that is, somehow beneath the level of consciousness. What I shall call
the unconscious, implicit pressure of the principle of non-­contradiction on
these three thinkers decisively determines their respective paths.
This pressure leads Leibniz to posit, in addition to identical propositions,
that is, propositions that conform to the first of the two great principles (the
principle of non-contradiction), propositions that he calls virtually identical. In
the latter, all of the predicates are contained in esse in the subject. This category

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of propositions has the ultimate result of interpreting all contingent proposi-

tions into necessary ones. It leads Hume’s argumentation into the famous cir-
cles that refute all causal arguments in principle, and drive him to conclude that
what we illicitly call “cause and effect” is a transition of the imagination from
one conjunct to its regularly subsequent conjunct: Quoting Hume from the
Principles Concerning the Human Understanding: “Nothing farther is the case.”7
Kant’s Schematism can be regarded as performing several tasks to relieve
the pressure of the principle of non-contradiction. Though the schemata are
said to contain aspects of both the intellect and the senses, they do so in a way
that these aspects complement rather than contradict one another. If one
might call them “weighted” in either direction, that direction would be toward
sense: they are, one and all, transcendental time-determinations. That is, the
two groups of mathematical categories concern the extension and the instan-
taneity of time, and the dynamical categories (with special attention to the
categories of relation) concern the duration, succession, and simultaneity of
time respectively. This bond to time leads to the most sweeping outcome of the
Critique of Pure Reason and beyond: Our knowledge is restricted to appear-
ances, i.e. objects occurring on the (spatio)-temporal field to which we are
given over. It is denied to what would be objects of the intellect if only the
principle of non-contradiction were a positive rather than merely a negative
principle. Thus, the notions of a separately existing soul, a world that derives or
does not derive from a beginning, and an existing God who might be consid-
ered in various ways are one and all illusions, although we are driven to them
out of need and seduced to them by virtue of their thinkability, i.e., their logi-
cally non-contradictory nature.
Leapfrogging ahead, Nietzsche’s “How the True World Finally Became a
Fable” not only does away with “the true world” (in a very different sense, Kant
also does so). “The true world we have abolished: What world has remained?
the apparent one perhaps? . . .  But no! with the true world we have also abol-
ished the apparent one.” (Noon; moment of the slightest shadow; end of the
longest error; high point of humanity; . . . . INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.)8 Sallis
indicates a provocative interpretation of this well-known and well-worn
yet decisive trope according to which “end” does not indicate cessation or
even overcoming but, rather, announces what has already occurred: the

7 David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, in Enquiry Concerning Human

Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Niddich,
3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 75.
8 Found in John Sallis, Delimitations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 162 and 161.
Sallis notes that the emphasis is Nietzsche’s.

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­ nsustainability of the founding sensible/intelligible distinction. It is the occa-

u
sion for a kind of questioning that could not be more demanding.
He also notes, however, that its words concerning the disappearance of the
apparent world do not proclaim anything like the dissolution of appearances.
Rather, the sensible/intelligible distinction that once buttressed the two
“worlds” has collapsed, conferring a new integrity upon the appearances. No
longer second-order copies of “real things,” they become the phenomena of
phenomenology—i.e., they become the “things themselves” to which self-
showing intrinsically belongs, rather than objects classified in terms of the
“two worlds.” Any likeness of bifurcation concerns the doubling of sense, i.e.,
the “sense of sense.” In terms of an image presented earlier, Sallis rethinks the
sense of schema in accord with a model anterior to that of a geometric figure,
which merely encloses and determines a certain space; rather he speaks—or
does he sing?—of a dance. The choreographer sets the movements of the
dance in advance, but the dance does not become a dance until the movement
of the dancer brings it to sense. In this preferred image, what Sallis has called
contrary moments in the constitution of the schemata arise—perhaps from
the stillness of the choreographic patterns, through the beautiful kinesis of the
dancer, with the latter incorporating what the initial stillness had disclosed.
I would extend this schema even to aleatory dances such as those choreo-
graphed more loosely, for example, by Merce Cunningham, enacted to music
composed separately by John Cage. In line with this, I would also interpret
fractal geometry more freely, or at least emphasize the following quality: frac-
tals arise from patterns discerned in sense; or else they give rise to images dis-
cernible in sense. There are no proofs analogous to those in Euclidean geometry
that can be performed a priori. Rather, they require algorithms that take their
departure from phenomena like those mentioned above, for example, shore-
lines, crystals, weather patterns, geographic maps, and determination of land
quantities. In a very important sense for us, Mandelbrot’s discovery of fractal
geometry and its subsequent developments lead to a kind of Socratic igno-
rance that brings us up short on matters we thought we might be able to know
if only we had better information.
Though Sallis does not make this express connection in Logic of Imagination,
I believe that it accords with the fundamental place toward which the book
and its predecessor gestures on every page. In the final paragraph of Force of
Imagination, he writes the following:

One will need . . . to offer—to have offered—a site to poetic imagination

and to venture a response, engendering whatever sense one can, now, at
the limit. The affinity [of philosophy] with art . . . is an affinity from a

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d­ istance that must always also be secured. But, like the poet, one who
would philosophize at the limit must always hope—since one cannot
simply begin—that imagination will have come. And seek to attest to its
coming.9

I shall conclude in words more familiar to me, words I employed in the Epilogue
to my Imagination in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason. There, I took pains to
note what might be called the negative side of #59 of the Critique of Judgment,
namely, that for Kant the experience of beauty is neither a necessary nor a suf-
ficient condition for morality—although it symbolizes morality, such symbol-
ization does not and cannot consist of determination. However, those moments
of good fortune in which we are gathered in the face of the beautiful serve
another crucial function: such moments are the only ones in which our senses,
imagination, and understanding find themselves in complete harmony with
one another. Or in the language I employed to express this, they are the only
moments that enable us to feel that we have truly come home.

9 Sallis, Force of Imagination, 229.

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