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By Kevin Grout, Class of 2016
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| Kevin Grout |
Beginning my second year at the University of Louisville brought with it excitement and a whole new set of challenges. Courses increased in difficulty, I took on more responsibility on campus, and the McConnell Center pushed me intellectually through whole new challenges. The ideas are powerful and conversations among Scholars expand what I learn to bounds I couldn’t imagine.
Scholars have often written about the idea of the human imagination. Thinkers like Kirk and Zamyatin expressed the uniqueness of the imagination and its effect on humanity. Earlier this semester, I had the opportunity to attend a conference in Mecosta, Michigan, at the home of Russell Kirk. During lectures and seminars, I heard Professor Vigen Gurorian expound on the wonders of the human imagination. This essence, the animating feature unique to our species, is the human soul. The morality inherent in all people is the recognition of natural law, and this is the imagination. These Kirkian ideas seemed almost impossible to comprehend. Wrestling with the idea of a moral imagination, the single spark defining the essence of humanity, isn’t a notion that comes easily.
Luckily for me, Kirk was not the only one with this idea. I had the pleasure of experiencing We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. His dystopian work, one of the first of its kind, followed a man named D-503. As he discovered the flaws of his government, he also began to discover his imagination. Near the end of the novel, the One State declared that people were naturally imperfect. Not only imperfect, the government deemed this as a sickness. The name they gave this sickness – imagination. Imagination deteriorated the chances of happiness of the citizens of the One State. Every action taken by the workers that does not directly contribute to their labors is wasteful and a direct contribution of the imagination. The government even goes so far as to propose a ‘Great Operation’ to remove the imagination in order to ‘perfect’ humanity.
The imagination is profound and difficult to explain. Is it life? Is it the soul? According to these authors, the imagination is a source of morality which cannot be overstated. This theory has been illuminating and powerful. What does this imagination mean? How does it influence us? Since I learned about the vast moral imagination this semester, hopefully the McConnell Center will take me to the next step in the spring!
Kevin Grout is a sophomore McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville. He is majoring in Political Science and History and minoring in Economics.