Despite Jean-Paul Sartre and Cornelius Castoriadis placing the imagination centre stage in their respective conceptual theories, little work has been done to bring them into conversation on this issue or, indeed, any other. This is perhaps not surprising given Sartre’s early work on this topic has tended to be downplayed in favour of his affirmation of freedom, while Castoriadis not only denigrates Sartre’s thinking generally and his account of the imagination specifically but also posits their relationship as one of opposition. (...) In contrast, this article brings them into conversation on the question of the imagination to call into question Castoriadis assessment of their relation. To do so, I outline Sartre’s position in The Imaginary, showing that Castoriadis assessment of Sartre’s notion is based on a problematic, if common, misunderstanding of Sartre’s notion of nothingness and its relationship to creativity. Having overcome the opposition that Castoriadis affirms between their respective positions, I argue that, while there certainly are differences between their positions, there are also important points of agreement and overlap between them, especially regarding the constitutive role that the imagination plays for consciousness, and the relationships between the imagination and freedom and the imagination and creativity, that point to a shared and original approach. (shrink)

I argue that imagination has an inherently paradoxical structure: it enables one to flee one’s socio-cultural reality and to constitute one’s socio-cultural world. I maintain that most philosophical accounts of the imagination leave this paradox unexplored. I further contend that Paul Ricoeur is the only thinker to have addressed this paradox explicitly. According to Ricoeur, to resolve this paradox, one needs to recognize language as the origin of productive imagination. This paper explores Ricoeur’s solution by offering a detailed study of (...) reproductive and productive imagination in the framework of poetic imagination. My analysis subjects Ricoeur’s distinction between reproductive and productive imagination to a critique that relies upon the principles of classical phenomenology. According to my central thesis, the imaginative powers of language are themselves rooted in perception. This thesis broadens the scope and significance of Ricoeur’s solution by enabling one to resolve the paradox of imagination not only at the level of language-based imagination, but also at the level of dreams and daydreaming as well as at the level of non-language based art. No less significantly, this thesis enables one to open a fresh dialogue between phenomenology and hermeneutics. (shrink)

Straipsnyje analizuojamos moderniosios vaizduotės sampratos transformacijos fenomenologinėse Edwardo Casey, Mikelio Dufrenne’o ir Vosyliaus Sezemano koncepcijose. Straipsnio tikslas – parodyti, kad estetinėje patirtyje akivaizdžiai atsiskleidžia kūniškas vaizduotės pobūdis. Casey kritikuoja Dufrenne’o bandymą vaizduotę susieti su estetine raiška. Jis pabrėžia vaizduotės autonomiją, tačiau tokiu atveju lieka neaiškus vaizduotės ir suvokimo santykis. Dufrenne’o ir Sezemano pozicija vaizduotės klausimu iš dalies sutampa. Abu jie teigia, kad vaizduotė yra ne produktyvi, bet reproduktyvi ta prasme, kad ji yra apribota materialinio a priori formomis. Kitaip sakant, estetinė (...) raiška yra negalima, jeigu ji nesilaiko suvokiamojo ir suvokiančiojo koreliacijos principo. Sukurti galima tik reprodukuojant išraiškoje kito suvokimo galimybę. Sezemanas pabrėžia kūniškos vaizduotės pirmumą. Įkūnytas vaizduotės judesys atskleidžia būtiną objekto ir subjekto koreliaciją. Vaizduotės kūniškumas pabrėžia buvimo pasaulyje pirmumą, nes vaizduotė yra laisva veikla ir ją riboja tik „pasaulio horizonto stilius“. (shrink)