Wallace Stevens Archives

Illustration of woman holding her palm toward the viewer with her face obscured by her hand.

Literary intellectuals investigate the power imagination gives us to pose unending questions about our world—viewing religion, philosophy, and science as literary genres full of metaphors.

Essays Philosophy

The Opposable Thumb at the End of the Imagination

August 17, 2023August 17, 2023 21 min read Rick Joines Henry David Thoreau, Pragmatism, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Rorty, Wallace Stevens

Literary intellectuals investigate the power imagination gives us to pose unending questions about our world—viewing religion, philosophy, and science as literary genres full of metaphors.