Mathilde Cappelli is a PhD student at the University of Geneva and a member of the Thumos research group on emotions, values and norms. Her dissertation is devoted to the nature of sexual desire and its distinctive affective and imaginative dimensions. She is working on it in the context of Professors Julien Deonna, Bence Nanay, and Fabrice Teroni’s “Emotion and Mental Imagery” SNF funded research project. Her other research interests are, in the main, philosophy of mind and philosophy of fiction, and in particular fiction-directed emotions.
A post by Mathilde Cappelli
It is a striking fact that, while much work has been devoted to the nature, norms, and value of imagination, fantasy has received scarce attention. This may partly be because fantasy is often conceived of as a mere subcategory of imagination, from which not much can be learned (Cherry, 1985; Kershnar, 2005; Smuts, 2016). But inquiring into the nature, norms, and value of fantasy can shed light on many interrelated issues, from the nature of desire to that of pleasure and imagination. In this post, I will present some thoughts on the nature and value of fantasy.
Admittedly, the nature of fantasy is quite puzzling. When one fantasizes about X, one usually enjoys the affective experience that comes along with it, and one does not want to move one’s attention away from the object of one’s fantasy. On the other hand, it seems one can fantasize about things one neither wants, nor hopes or wishes to be the case in real life. How should we understand this?
Consider the following case. Sarah is an ambitious businesswoman who usually works very hard all day long until late in the evening. Frequently, just after lunch, she feels exhausted and drained of energy, and takes pleasure in imagining herself going to bed right now, enjoying the softness of the sheets on her skin, the smoothness of the mattress, and the very quiet and relaxing moment she would have.
This sort of imaginative activity is typical of those we usually call ‘fantasy’, and it differs from imagination in at least the following way: fantasizing always seems to involve a positively valenced affective component, whereas imagining can be emotionally neutral. In other words, fantasy is always pleasurable. As Miriam McCormick argues, “it is the pleasurably imagining that distinguishes fantasy from other kinds of imagining” and it seems “constitutive of fantasies that they are pleasant” (2020, p.279). Aaron Smuts advances in the same fashion that fantasy is a “conscious, pleasurable imagining” (2016, p.380) and that “the notion of a sad fantasy is incoherent” (2016, p.385). The assumption is: it is a necessary condition for fantasy that we take pleasure in the concerned imaginative activity.
But what exactly is it about this activity that is pleasurable? Note that for an imaginative activity to be one of fantasizing X, it is not sufficient that one imagines that one would take pleasure in X if X were the case. Imagining that having a drink this evening with my best friends would be enjoyable is not fantasizing about this moment if the imagining in itself is not pleasurable. So, fantasizing is not imagining that I would take pleasure in something, it is rather taking pleasure in imagining something, whatever the content of my fantasy is. Further, for an imaginative activity to be one of fantasizing X, it is also not necessary that one imagines one would take pleasure in X if X were the case. Sarah can fantasize about going to bed right now without imagining or believing that she would take pleasure in actually doing this right now, given her ambitions and commitment at work. Similarly, I can imagine punching an unbearably arrogant philosopher in a Q&A session, or having a sexual affair with a married colleague, both without actually wanting to do or have these things. So, desiring that X be the case doesn’t seem to be necessary for fantasizing X, yet fantasizing X always comes with a positive feeling.
But is it really true that fantasy is always positively valenced? One might want to argue that we are sometimes repelled by our own fantasies – generally for moral reasons. Consider, for instance, the case of Nathan who fantasizes about the death of his grandfather with whom he has a very complicated relationship. His fantasy repels him, and he is profoundly ashamed of it. Doesn’t this prevent him from taking pleasure in imagining the death of his grandfather? – I don’t think so, as it can be argued that the negative hedonic tone in question is not attached to the fantasy itself, but instead to a simultaneous or subsequent negative evaluative judgement. It can even be argued that it is precisely because Nathan takes pleasure in fantasizing about the death of his grandfather that he is ashamed of it and feels bad about his fantasy.
One might also want to argue that my minimal characterization of fantasy (as involving taking pleasure in imagining something) is too broad to capture our intuitions about the notion. Suppose that after many efforts, I succeed in imagining a complex geometric figure, and then take pleasure in my achievement. My imagining should count as a case of fantasy – but it clearly isn’t such a case. However, when I claim that fantasizing about something involves taking pleasure in imagining something, what I mean is that the intentional object of one’s imaginative activity – what one imagines in this activity – is the intentional object of the pleasure taken in this activity. When the intentional object of the pleasure taken in this activity is the success of having imagined, as in the case of the complex geometric figure, we are not concerned with a case of fantasy, according to the notion of fantasy we are concerned with.
The question of the value of fantasy is also puzzling. It has been widely defended in the philosophical literature that imagination can improve our epistemic position – in being a way of forming new beliefs (Myers, 2021), in being capable of justifying those beliefs (Kind, 2016) and, in certain cases, in being able to turn the justified belief into knowledge. But fantasy seems to be too unconstrained to be of epistemic value. More generally, it seems natural to think that fantasy neither has epistemic nor moral value but, at best, prudential value.
This can be called into question. First, fantasy seems to be required in order to properly grasp and appreciate the prudentially, aesthetically, morally and/or epistemically valuable contents of some fictions. For instance, it could be argued that in order to entirely grasp the morally and epistemically valuable lessons that can be drawn from The Godfather, it is necessary to fantasize about being Michael Corleone. Or that in order to fully appreciate the prudentially and/or aesthetically valuable content of some erotic or pornographic representations, it is necessary to fantasize about what they represent. Second, and more importantly, it seems to me that fantasy is an irreplaceable source of knowledge about oneself. Due to its distinctive phenomenology, i.e., due to the pleasure we take in imagining, fantasy gives us direct epistemic access to what we find immediately attractive, which can be characterized as what we desire. But note that fantasy then gives us access to the things we have a desire for, whether or not we want them to be the case in real life. As the examples above show, Sarah doesn’t really want to go to sleep after lunch, I might not really want to punch the arrogant philosopher, and I might not really want to have an affair with a colleague. Thus, fantasy gives us access to the things we have a brute attraction for, but it doesn’t help us settle the question of whether or not we really want the things we fantasize about to be the case in real life. Why is it so? My suggestion is that because fantasizing is taking pleasure in imagining something, the following is the case: when one fantasizes, one is focused on the pleasurable (imaginative) sensations one experiences and simply sets aside the question of what it would be like if the fantasy became reality.
To conclude, it sometimes feels good to imagine certain things, we let ourselves go into a sort of pleasurable imagining, our minds are only focused on the positive, and we allow ourselves to do nothing but enjoy the moment. And because this imaginative activity feels good, we can learn what is pleasant for us, we can learn about some of our desires without worrying about whether we want what we desire to be real. If we find ourselves in this situation, we are fantasizing. Prima facie, fantasizing is good and wise: we’ll have a pleasurable time while learning things about ourselves.
References
CHERRY, Christopher. 1985. “The Inward and the Outward: Fantasy, Reality and Satisfaction”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 15: 175-193.
1988. “When Is Fantasising Morally Bad?”, Philosophical Investigations: 11: 112-132.
COOKE, Brandon. 2014. “Ethics and fictive imagining”, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism: 72: 225-350.
HALWANI, Raja. 2018. “Sexual Perversion and Sexual Fantasy”. In Philosophy of love, sex and marriage, ed. R. Halwani, 280-320, London: Routledge.
HERSHFIELD, Jeffrey. 2009. “The Ethics of Sexual Fantasy”, International Journal of Applied Philosophy: 23: 27-49.
KERSHNAR, Stephen. 2005. “The Moral Status of Sexual Fantasies”, Public Affairs Quarterly: 19: 301-315.
KIND, Amy. 2016. “Imagining Under Constraints”. In Knowledge Through Imagination, ed. A. Kind and P. Kung, 145-160, Oxford University Press: Oxford: Oxford.
LEVINSON, Jerrold. 2003. “Sexual Perversity”, The Monist: 86: 30-54.
MCCORMICK, Miriam. 2020. “The Value of a Free and Wandering Mind”. In The Ethics of Belief and Beyond, ed. Schmidt and Ernst, 270-288, Routledge: New York.
MORGAN, Seiriol. 2003. “Dark Desires”, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice: 6: 377-410.
MYERS Joshua. 2021. “The epistemic status of the imagination”, Philosophical Studies: 178: 3251-3270.
SMUTS, Aaron. 2016. “The ethic of imagination and fantasy”. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, ed. A. Kind, 380-91, London: Routledge.