The Iconic Imagination is a textured text. Reminiscent of George Steiner, Hedley weaves history, philosophy, theology, literature, psychology, and more throughout each chapter ... [It] holistically images various features of human life, and affirms vital academic interdisciplinarity … The Iconic Imagination merits reading, reflection, argument, and rereading.
Reading Religion
The Iconic Imagination is a significant contribution to philosophical ... Read moretheology, generally, and, specifically, a contribution to the naturalism versus theism debates and the growing body of research on Cambridge Platonism. It is a delightful read and well worth your time.
Reviews in Religion & Theology
The Iconic Imagination is the final volume in what is really a three-volume treatise on the imagination, so for a complete picture of Hedley's philosophical and theological vision I highly recommend reading all three books in the trilogy. Each book, however, is conceptually independent enough from the others to be read alone. Taken as a whole, the trilogy is a monumental achievement. It is also a real pleasure to read. The book is of obvious value for scholars and students interested in the legacy and continuing relevance of Platonism, and the Romantic tradition, but I also highly recommend it for anyone interested in philosophy of religion, and theology. Because of the breadth of Hedley's learning, and his engaging style, I recommend it especially highly to graduate students as a model of scholarship in its field.
Philosophy in Review
The Iconic Imagination takes the reader through a wonderfully rich and varied array of literary and philosophical sources, ancient and modern, in order to explore the role of the imagination in Western thought and culture. In a fitting continuation of his earlier volumes on the religious imagination and on the imagery of the sacrificial, Douglas Hedley’s highly erudite study provides fertile materials for grasping the metaphysical significance of the image as the bearer of transcendence.
John Cottingham, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Reading, UK, and Honorary Fellow, St John’s College Oxford, UK
Of the various streams of intellectual influence that collectively compose our mental world, the Platonic and Romantic influences are among the least understood or appreciated. This book, which completes Hedley’s magnificent, baroque, and profound tryptich on the imagination, is deeply informed by Romantic and Neoplatonic thinking, and will go a very long way to remedying our ignorance in this regard. To feast on its learning is to be nourished intellectually in ways you did not know you were famished; and to be informed by its allusive and visionary argument is to glimpse horizons of enquiry that you did not know were there. This work should have a major impact in philosophy, in theology, and in religious studies, and its influence on scholarly thinking about the human, the imagination, and religion will be felt for decades to come.
Charles Mathewes, Carolyn M. Barbour Professor of Religious Studies, University of Virginia, USA
[An] extraordinarily rich exploration of our image-making tendencies, understood as responses to a meaningful and value-laden world ... This is a book that constantly challenges us with reminders of possibilities for thinking beyond the narrow range of much recent philosophy and theology. Impressively learned but highly readable, it does not merely discuss the intellectual imagination, but stimulates it as well.
Religious Studies Review
Show Less