Process Imagining

Thus, the ambiguity of the Image comes from the fact that it can be either an idol (Gr. eidolon) or an icon (Gr. eikon). It is an idol when it fixes the viewer’s vision on itself. Then it is opaque, without transparency, and remains at the level of that from which it was formed. But it is an icon, whether a painted image or a mental one, when its transparency permits the viewer to see through it to something beyond it, and because what is beyond can be seen only through it. This is precisely the status of the Image that is known as a “theophanic form.” The Image of the Imam, the Image of the Fourteen Immaculate Ones, has for the faithful Shiite this theophanic virtue. It is equally true to say that the theophanic form is a mirror (_ayineh_, Lat. speculum). All our philosophers who share the theophanic sense of things have gone back to the motif of the mirror, thus giving speculative Imagination its true meaning, its etymological meaning, which is the same meaning that Franz von Baader gave to speculative philosophy when he said: “To speculate is to reflect” (Spekulieren heisst spiegeln).