Inofensive Madnesses

Abstract

This article offers an argument concerning the role of the imagination facing the threat of “totalitarian images”. The argument’s is weaved from the story of the citizen of Argos told by Erasmus of Rotterdam, and develops into two blocs. In the first bloc, three elementary distinctions are made, between: (1) imagination and ready-made images; (2) imagination and equivocation; (3) imagination and hallucination. Following the distinc-tions, in the second bloc the argument focuses on the role of the imagination as a potency that resists ready-made images and totalitarian mental schemes. In the end, a criticism of the kidnapping of the imagination is articulated in light of some of Hannah Arendt’s and Paul Ricoeur’s approaches, especially as regards the homogenizing and collectivist charac-ter of ideologies.