Mellon Research Fellow
Ph.D., Emory University, 2012
316 Thornton
646-2112
Office Hours: By Appointment
Smaranda Aldea completed her Ph.D. in 2012 at Emory University with a dissertation on the import of the imagination (Phantasie) for Edmund Husserl's phenomenological method of inquiry. Her interest in the imagination was spurred years ago while reading Giambattista Vico's New Science – a text where he argues that philosophy begins in and through the imagination (fantasia). After discovering a similar claim in Husserl's Ideas I, she decided to pursue this thought further and ask questions such as: What is the imagination? How is the imagination related to perception and judgment? Does imagining entail mental images? Could we imagine something non-spatial or are all of our imaginings bound by previous perceptions? What role, if any, does the imagination play in philosophical thought? How, if at all, does the imagination facilitate the attainment of knowledge of universals?
While her work on the imagination is firmly grounded in the phenomenological tradition and deeply informed by the history of philosophy (esp. Ancient and Early Modern philosophy), her interests span across field-specific boundaries. The research project she will be focusing on while at Dartmouth will examine the role played by the imagination in inquiring thought broadly construed, hypothetical and experimental thought, as well as idealizing processes such as mathematical abstraction.
Fall 2012
Phil 17 (12) Phenomenology and Existentialism
Winter 2013
Phil 50 (2A) Special Topics: Phenomenology of the Imagination
Spring 2013
Non-teaching term
Summer 2103
Non-teaching term
Fall 2013
Non-teaching term
Winter 2014
Phil 17 (12) Phenomenology and Existentialism
Spring 2014
Phil 50 (10) Special Topics: Husserl and Frege: Exploring the Analytic-Continental Divide
