Genealogy and Ontology of the Western Image and its Digital Future

Through an examination of key moments in the history of the image as understood in the West, and in analysing contemporary theories of the image, this book aims to challenge the notion of the image as a thing, or object. In looking at Plato's ontology of the image, the image in Iconoclasm, the symbol and the image in the Renaissance, as well as the conception of the image as inaugurated by the Industrial Revolution, the book establishes the basis for how the image is conceived in 21st century society--a point in history when the digital image is beginning to hold sway.Lechte will show that early conceptions were more in tune with the idea that the image is a way of experiencing the world than is the case in Western, mediatised societies of the last 50 years, where the image is treated as an object much like other objects. To demonstrate the fallacy of this position, the book undertakes a new analysis of Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophy of the image. The argument is that no approach to the ontology of the image is adequate if it does not take into account key elements of Sartre's approach to the image.