proceedings
Kathleen Lennon
Unpacking "the Imaginary Texture of the Real" with Kant, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty
Volume 13 (2017), Numéro 2 (Série Actes, 10: L'acte d'imagination: Approches phénoménologiques), p. 34-51
https://doi.org/10.25518/1782-2041.932
Abstract: In this paper I put forward a concept of the imagination which weaves together many of the key and overlapping dichotomies around which discussions of the imagination have circled: dichotomies between the productive and reproductive, between presence and absence, between creativity or spontaneity and receptivity or passivity, between invention and disclosure, between cognition and affect. Inter-implicated with these dichotomies is that between imagination and perception. Utilising the work of Kant and Merleau-Ponty, and in critical conversation with Sartre, I distil an account of the imagination which cuts across these dichotomies, delineating a capacity which is at work in perception, as well as in the range of activities of “phantasing” or “conjuring up”, to which the term is often restricted.
Keywords: imagination, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Kant.
