In the writings of the fifth-century neoplatonist Proclus and the ‘first’ modern thinker RenéDescartes imagination displays a remarkable ambiguity by destabilizing the rigiddistinctions between original/copy and intelligibility/sensibility from within. After apresentation of both Proclus’ and Descartes’ ideas concerning the concept of imagination –while paying special attention to the so-called geometrical imagination – I will argue thatthroughout the text of the history of philosophy imagination always emerges as apharmakon, a magic potion that simultaneously cures and poisons. Neither platonism northe classical epistèmè have succeeded in restraining imagination’s ambiguous force. On thecontrary, precisely within these moments the symptom of an equivocal imagination seemsto emerge at its height.
