Ethicality and Imagination

John Sallis is Frederick J. Adelmann Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. He is author of more than 20 books, including Light Traces (IUP, 2014), The Figure of Nature (IUP, 2016), and Songs of Nature (IUP, 2020).

"This extraordinary work completes Sallis's magnum opus, his trilogy on the imagination, inaugurated with Force of Imagination and Logic of Imagination. As it now stands, this trilogy is one of the masterpieces in the Continental idiom in any language, and perhaps the signature work in American English"—Jason M. Wirth, Seattle University, and author of Schelling's Practice of the Wild"Sallis has long demonstrated that the inconceivable is never unimaginable, and that this primacy of the imagination – its force and logic – opens original possibilities for understanding and speaking of the world. This new contribution to Sallis' remarkable project draws out the moments of ethicality that appear by virtue of this force of the imagination. In doing this, Sallis shows how the elements of an ethical sense – the intimacies of life shared in time – emerge with their own power and truth. A sweeping work of astonishing insights, this book is written with a wonderful alchemy of eloquence, grace, and precision – it is a pleasure to read."—Dennis J. Schmidt, Western Sydney University"With a reservation we have come to recognize as one of his characteristics, John Sallis opens this book under the sign of ventriloquism, as if to underline the many voices echoing through his discourse and the variety of references it weaves together, from archaic poetry to modern cosmology. And yet, paradoxically, in this potent meditation on the human condition Sallis speaks in a voice that is more than ever unmistakably his own—free, searching, originally suggestive. In this voice, he addresses the elusive question of ethos, symphonically unfolded as a matter of custom, of character, and above all of dwelling: between heaven and earth, in invisible and all-receptive space, amid things showing themselves as well as political strains, in the unexhausted disclosiveness of imagination."—Claudia Baracchi, Università di Milano-Bicocca.

• Prefatory Note1. Ventriloquies of Origin2. Luminous Space3. Solitude and the Stars4. Ethicality5. Governance6. Fecundity7. Cosmic VisionsIndex