Definition of "phantasia"
phantasia
noun
plural phantasias
(dated) Something imaginary; a fantasy.
Quotations
But even here suppuration does not always stop, reaching often the fore-arm, and in such cases even life is endangered. Unhealthy granulations, thrombosis of veins, septicæmia and pyæmia cause death. This picture is not merely a phantasia, but exists in reality, and I myself had occasion to witness two cases of this kind in the surgical wards of Berlin; [...]
1872 November, Carl Proegler, “Article II. The Panaritium (Felon)—Consequences and Treatment.”, in J. Adams Allen, Walter Hay, editors, The Chicago Medical Journal. A Monthly Record of Medicine, Surgery and the Collateral Sciences, volume XXIX, number 11, Chicago, Ill.: W. B. Keen, Cooke & Co., pages 656–657
When one thing fits into another, when all the parts mutually support and are supported, when a theory is capable of accounting for all questions, and thus is, in a certain sense, self-balanced and self-sustained and entire, we have a phantasia of truth forced upon our minds, even against our will.
1872, John Henry Newman, “Palmer on Faith and Unity”, in Essays Critical and Historical, 2nd edition, volume I, London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], page 146
(philosophy) A phantasm (an impression received through the senses) or the faculty of receiving or representing these impressions.
Quotations
Phantasia, then, is the animal's awareness of some object or state of affairs, which may well prove to be an object of desire. [...] I am thirsty; I have (in the absence of the object) a phantasia of drink. [...] Phantasia can also be used to account for delusion in practical cases: "Poor dog, he saw that as water (or as drink) when it was really ammonia solution."
1978, Martha Craven Nussbaum, Aristotle’s De Motu Animalium […], Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, published 1985, page 261
[T]he possibility of eating a piece of pie might be presented to you by your seeing it on the kitchen table. This stage is called phantasia, presentation or impression. Corresponding to a phantasia is a lekton, a proposition or sayable, for example, it is fitting for me to eat that piece of pie, which the agent entertains but does not necessarily endorse when she has a phantasia.
1994, Derk Pereboom, “Stoic Psychotherapy in Descartes and Spinoza”, in Genevieve Lloyd, editor, Spinoza: Critical Assessments, volumes I (Context, Sources and the Early Writings), London, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, published 2001, section I, page 150
Chrysippus called 'experience' the "treasury of phantasias", [...] According to Chrysippus, the phantasias burdened with appearances can be distinguished from the true ones by the mobilization of former groups of phantasias and by the operations with them.
2005, Mihály Szívós, “Temporality, Reification and Subjectivity: Carneades and the Foundations of the World of Subjectivity”, in Pierluigi Barrotta, Marcelo Dascal, editors, Controversies and Subjectivity (Controversies; 1), Amsterdam, Philadelphia, Pa.: John Benjamins Publishing Company, section 4.2 (The Temporalization of the Cognition Process I), page 216
Everything in the created world has to be understood not just an appearance or image—a phantasia, in [John Scotus] Eriugena's vocabulary—but as at the same time a divine revelation or manifestation, [...]
2014, Dermot Moran, “‘The Secret Folds of Nature’: Eriugena’s Expansive Concept of Nature”, in Alfred Kentigern Siewers, editor, Re-imagining Nature: Environmental Humanities and Ecosemiotics, Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press; Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, part II (Medieval Natures), page 109
Quotations
The little Italian party, before alluded to, had collected around the piano. The white and plump fingers of the gay and black-eyed daughter of the Roman marchioness were tripping lightly up and down the octaves of the instrument, and her little tastefully arranged head was merrily dancing from side to side, keeping time to the half-improvised phantasia, which trickled like a wayward stream from her hands.
1853 July, Thomas Buchanan Read, “Pilgrims of the Great St. Bernard”, in George R[ex] Graham, editor, Graham’s Magazine, volume XLIII, number 1, Philadelphia, Pa.: [Watson & Co. […]?], chapter VIII, page 105
She [Josepha Barbara Auernhammer] published subsequently many works of her own, (in all 63,) which, as well as her play, especially the extempore phantasias, were distinguished by much delicate feeling and a vivid imagination.
1857, Hugh James Rose, “AURENHAMMER,[sic – meaning AUERNHAMMER] (Josepha)”, in A New General Biographical Dictionary, […], volume II, London: T. Fellowes, […], pages 368–369
It is, however, a ceremony of immense antiquity, and the chief civil festival of the year among the Arabs, who love nothing more dearly than a "phantasia" of this sort.
1872 October 19, “The Cutting of the Nile: From The Pall Mall Gazette”, in Littel’s Living Age, volume XXVII (Fourth Series; volume CXV overall), number 1480, Boston, Mass.: Littel & Gay, page 189, column 2
[The Warrior's Barrow (Kjæmpehøjen)] admirably conformed to his employers' National-Romantic aims. This is equally true of the four new plays with which [Henrik] Ibsen honoured his contract: St. John's Night) (Sancthansnatten, 1853), a phantasia having a good deal in common with [William] Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream [...]
1966, Brian W[esterdale] Downs, “Ibsen before 1884”, in Modern Norwegian Literature 1860–1918, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, published 2010, page 44
These are the years in which she [Ellen Terry] begins to sign her letters in a phantasia of different names.
1987, Nina Auerbach, “Our Lady of the Lyceum”, in Joan DeJean, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Peter Stallybrass, Gary Tomlinson, editors, Ellen Terry, Player in Her Time (New Cultural Studies), Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, published 1997, page 209