Fichtes Konzeption vom »Schweben der Einbildungskraft« ist in der Ästhetik der Romantik aufgegriffen und zu einer zentralen Denkfigur geworden. Auch die Philosophie Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solgers, des Nachfolgers Fichtes auf dem Lehrstuhl in Berlin, pflegt in die Romantische Ästhetik im Gefolge Friedrich Schlegels eingeordnet zu werden, gerade auch im Hinblick auf die Bedeutung der Einbildungskraft. Um so überraschender ist dann aber die Tatsache, dass die Einbildungskraft für Solgers Ästhetik, anders als etwa bei Schlegel und Novalis, gar keine Rolle spielt. Sie (...) gehört zu den »gemeinen Erkenntnisarten« und wird der Phantasie, die die Form der »höheren Erkenntnis« ist, entgegengesetzt. Die »Einbildungskraft [ist] an die sinnliche Wahrnehmung geheftet und vom Triebe ganz bestimmt, die Phantasie aber führt das göttliche Wesen in die Erscheinung über«. Nun spricht Solger häufig in diesem Sinne von der »gemeinen Einbildungskraft«, und man könnte meinen, dass es hier nur um eine Frage der Benennung gehe, indem die produktive Einbildungskraft bei ihm den Namen Phantasie erhält, während er die Bezeichnung,Einbildungskraft’ für die reproduktive Einbildungskraft reserviert, wofür der Zusatz »gemeine« steht. Auch wenn dem so wäre - die Frage, ob es sich so verhält, soll noch untersucht werden –, so muss es doch einen Grund geben, warum Solger sich von der Tradition abkehrt und einen in ihr bewährten Begriff ersetzt. (shrink)

In den Texten aus dem Nachlass, die in dieser Studienausgabe vereinigt sind, kommt es wesentlich darauf an, unterschiedliche Phänomene des Vergegenwärtigens gegenüber dem Wahrnehmen auf der Grundlage reflexiver Bewußtseinsanalyse explizit zur Klarheit zu bringen. In einem weiten Wortgebrauch fasst Husserl Phantasie oft ganz allgemein als »das als Vergegenwärtigung charakterisierte Bewußtsein«; oder wie er auch sagt: »Zum Wesen der Phantasie gehört das Nichtgegenwärtigkeits-Bewußtsein. Wir leben in einer Gegenwart, wir haben ein Blickfeld der Wahrnehmung, aber daneben haben wir Erscheinungen, die (...) gänzlich außerhalb dieses Blickfeldes ein Nichtgegenwärtiges vorstellen«. Etwas technischer gesprochen, bringt Husserl Grundformen des Bewußtseins, spezifische Weisen der Intention, Modifikationen in den Aktcharakteren bzw. in den Charakteren der gegenständlichen Korrelate von Bewußtseinserlebnissen zu wechselseitiger Abhebung. Es handelt sich somit um Texte, in denen die von früh an zentrale Thematik der phänomenologischen Bestimmung »wesentlich verschiedener 'Weisen des Bewußtseins', nämlich der intentionalen Beziehung auf Gegenständliches«, wie es in der fünften der Logischen Untersuchungen (1901) heißt, für bestimmte Bewußtseinsarten in concreto durchgeführt wird. Des näheren geht es darum, innerhalb der Erlebnisklasse der Vorstellungen - in Abhebung von Urteilen und Gefühlen - die verschiedenen Charaktere der Intention der anschaulichen Vorstellungen gegenüber denjenigen der begrifflichen Vorstellungen zu bestimmen. (shrink)

Anhand der Frage, ob fiktionale Texte Wissen enthalten können, erörtert der Beitrag das Verhältnis von Kunst und Erkenntnis bzw. Ästhetik und Erkenntnistheorie. Der erste Teil erinnert an die traditionelle Bestimmung der Ästhetik durch Baumgarten. Als Theorie der unteren Erkenntnisvermögen und als Theorie der schönen Künste werden der Ästhetik zwei Aufgaben zugemutet: eine Beschreibung der unteren Erkenntnisvermögen und deren Ausbildung und Verbesserung. Durch die Auseinandersetzung mit ästhetischen Objekten im weitesten Sinne können wir etwas lernen, indem die sinnlichen Vermögen auf besondere (...) Weise involviert und als Fähigkeiten verfeinert werden. Der zweite Teil des Beitrags macht deutlich, dass die Lektüre fiktionaler Texte das Wahrnehmungsvermögen verfeinert, außerdem die Fähigkeiten der Aufmerksamkeit, Vorstellungskraft und Phantasie bildet. Der dritte Teil diskutiert den Begriff des nicht-propositionalen Wissens in seiner Relevanz für fiktionale Literatur und Erkenntnistheorie. Guided by the question of whether fictional texts can contain knowledge, the article discusses the relationship between art and knowledge or aesthetics and epistemology. The first part recalls the traditional characterization of aesthetics by Baumgarten: as a theory of the lower cognitive faculties and as a theory of the fine arts, aesthetics is expected to perform two tasks. It has to describe the lower cognitive faculties and it has to train and to improve them. While engaging with aesthetic objects in the broadest sense, we can learn something by involving the sensual faculties in a special way and refining them as skills. The second part of the article argues that reading fictional texts improves the perceptive faculties, as well as the skills of attention and imagination. The third part discusses the notion of non-propositional knowledge and its relevance to fictional literature as well as epistemology. (shrink)

Dieses Werk, nach den "Amores" Ovids zweite Elegiendichtung, ist eine Sammlung von 21 fiktiven Liebesbriefen zumeist von berühmten Frauen des Altertums, in denen sie ihren fernen Geliebten ihr Leid klagen. So schreibt etwa Penelope an Ulixes, Briseis an Achilles, Dido an Aeneas, Medea an Jason oder Sappho an Phaon. Ovid hat für eine zweite Ausgabe die Sammlung um den pikanten Briefwechsel von Paris mit Helena, von Acontius mit Cydippe und, am bekanntesten, von Leander mit Hero erweitert. Seine Charakterbilder, in denen (...) sich auf kleinem Raum ganze Liebesromane spiegeln, sind nicht nur literarische Meisterstücke, sondern auch überzeugende Dokumente mitfühlender Phantasie. Viele Themen der Liebe - Eifersucht, Trennungsschmerz, quälende Erinnerungen, Treue und Verblendung, die verzehrende Sehnsucht nach dem Geliebten - sind in die 21 Gedichte eingegangen und machen die "Heroides" zu einem bedeutsamen poetischen Dokument in der Geschichte menschlicher Liebe. Die Ausgabe macht den gesamten überlieferten Text in neu revidierter Fassung zugänglich. (shrink)

This is the first English translation of Husserliana XXIII, the volume in the critical edition of Edmund Husserl's works that gathers together a rich array of posthumous texts on representational consciousness. The lectures and sketches comprising this work make available the most profound and comprehensive Husserlian account of image consciousness. They explore phantasy in depth, and furnish nuanced accounts of perception and memory.

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This paper addresses Suárez’s understanding of imagination and phantasy, dealing with it in the general Aristotelian debate on the internal senses. Paragraph 1 sketches Aristotle’s, Avicenna’s and Aquinas’s accounts of imagination, examining especially the boundary between human and animal cognition. Paragraph 2 addresses especially the Jesuits’ understanding of the topology of the internal senses, linking it with the Jesuit strategy for the demonstration of the soul’s immateriality and immortality. Paragraphs 3 and 4 deal with Suárez’s simplification of the internal senses, (...) aimed at establishing a direct opposition between intellection (in men) and a general lower cognitive activity founded in the use of sensory representations (shared by men and animals). Paragraphs 5 and 6 focus on the role of phantasy in Suárez’s account of the illumination of phantasms, on Suárez’s use of Scotus’ concepts of ‘sympathy’, and ‘concomitance’ and the relevance of such a model in the demonstration of the soul’s immortality. (shrink)

In this essay the author argues that, in a restricted sense, we can decide to believe certain propositions. It is conceded that acquiring a belief is not a basic action and possibly not even an action at all. However, this does not entail the impossibility of decisions to believe since not everything we can decide to do is a basic action. In fact, we can often decide to be in a certain state of affairs. Although beliefs normally aim at truth, (...) there are cases in which we can voluntarily seek or avoid irrational states of affairs and thereby influence our attitudes. Bearing this in mind, situations in which we can talk of decisions to belief can be construed easily. (shrink)

Was bedeutet, dass etwas durch mich geschieht, in einer kausal verfassten Welt? Wir verstehen uns als aktiv Handelnde, als Ursache dessen, was wir tun. Aber wir kommen nicht umhin, anzunehmen, dass die Menschen und ihre Handlungen Teil der natürlichen Ordnung von Ursachen und Wirkungen sind und sich hierin nicht von der übrigen Natur unterscheiden. Die kausalen Ereignisfolgen laufen, so scheint es, durch die Personen hindurch, von außen in sie hinein und von innen in Form von Handlungen aus ihnen heraus. (...) Verflüchtigt sich dann aber nicht das Ich, von dem wir glauben, es bestimme, was wir tun? Was bedeuten dann Urheberschaft, Freiheit, Verantwortlichkeit? - In seinem Essay stellt sich Peter Stemmer diesen Fragen, die unser Selbstverständnis elementar berühren. (shrink)

Meinongs Untersuchungen über Phantasie, Phantasieerlebnisse und Vorstellungsproduktion sind ein wichtiger Bestandteil seiner Konzeption des Fiktiven. Nach Meinong verweist die Phantasie auf ihr Korrelat, das er in „Phantasie-Vorstellung und Phantasie“ (1889) mit den Phantasievorstellungen identifiziert. Solche Vorstellungen sind, da sie produziert werden, nicht einfach, sondern aus mehreren, miteinander in Beziehung gesetzten Elementen zusammengesetzt. Zur Erklärung, wie Phantasievorstellungen produziert werden, entwickelt Meinong die Theorie der Vorstellungsproduktion. Bei der Entwicklung dieser Theorie stellt der Essay „Über Gegenstände höherer (...) Ordnung“ (1899) eine wichtige Etappe dar. Diese Lehre bedeutet einerseits eine Vertiefung der Relationstheorie und andrerseits bietet die Bearbeitung des Begriffs der Fundierung die Erklärung, wie sich Superiora auf Inferiora aufbauen. Das psychologische Gegenstück der Fundierung ist die Vorstellungsproduktion, insofern diese erklärt, wie die Vorstellung eines Gegenstandes höherer Ordnung aus Vorstellungen von Gegenständen niedrigerer Ordnung hervorgeht. Die weitere Entwicklung von Meinongs Denken in Über Annahmen (1902, 1910) führt zur Erweiterung des Tätigkeitsbereichs der Phantasie auf das ganze psychische Leben sowohl durch die Entdeckung einer Art psychischer Erlebnisse in den Annahmen, die im Bereich des Denkens eine ähnliche Rolle spielen wie die Phantasievorstellungen im Bereich des Vorstellens, als auch durch die Entdeckung von Phantasiekorrelaten für Gefühle und Begehrungen, so daß die Phantasie das Unterscheidungskriterium innerhalb der Erlebnisse wird. Eine reichhaltige Forschungsperspektive öffnet die Betrachtung der ernstartigen und schattenhaften Phantasieerlebnisse in Über emotionale Präsentation (1917). (shrink)

Two disciplines have greatly contributed to a new understanding of phantasy and imagination in contemporary thought: phenomenology and psychoanalysis. These two different approaches to Phantasie developed almost simultaneously at the beginning of the twentieth century. The examination of Phantasie can focus on the concrete form of the phantasm as a unique object formation—or better, as scene. The attention can also be directed to the style of imagining as specific intentionality. Whereas the second line of research has been extensively (...) studied in the context of phenomenological investigation, psychoanalytical inquiry has greatly contributed to the understanding of the phantasm as scene. In the present paper, the author primarily examines the notion of phantasy from a phenomenological perspective. More specifically, the author intends to show the inner tensions between the concept of pure phantasy as intentional act and the manner of appearance of unclear phantasy. If we consider the essential traits of the appearances of unclear phantasies, the unclear phantasies cannot be considered as quasi-perceptions of a fictional object, since no intentional object constitutes itself in this confused dimension. (shrink)

Einleitung : Zur Entstehung der Schrift ; Zum Kontext der Schrift ; Zur Wirkung der Schrift ; Die zentralen Themen der Schrift -- Hinweise zur Edition -- Siglen und Kurztitel -- Bibliographische Angaben -- Karl Leonhard Reinhold : Ueber das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens nebst einigen Erläuterungen über die Theorie des Vorstellungsvermögens. Vorrede -- Uever das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens -- Die in 26sten Stück der A.L.Z. von 1791 enthaltene Beurtheilung der Reinholdschen Elementarphilosophie -- Des Herrn Hofrath und Professor Schwab (...) Gedanken über die Reinholdsche Theorie des Vorstellungsvermögens. Im 2ten St. des 3ten Bandes des Eberhardschen Magazins. Geprüft von M.F.C. Forberg -- Anhang : Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung 26/27. 28. Januar 1791, 201-208; 209-214 [Rezensent A. W. Rehberg] (Beyträge zur Berichtigung bisheriger Misverständnisse der Philosophen. Erster Band) ; Philosophisches Magazin. Hg. von Johann August Eberhard. Dritten Bandes zweytes Stück. Halle 1790, 125-147 (Ueber den Reinholdischen Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens, non J. C. Schwab). (shrink)

This dissertation explores and argues for the import of the imagination (Phantasie) in Edmund Husserl's phenomenological method of inquiry. It contends that Husserl's extensive analyses of the imagination influenced how he came to conceive the phenomenological method throughout the main stages of his philosophical career. The work clarifies Husserl's complex method of investigation by considering the role of the imagination in his main methodological apparatuses: the phenomenological, eidetic, and transcendental reductions, and eidetic variation - all of which remained ambiguous (...) despite his extensive programmatic discussions. The work illuminates and clarifies aspects of the Husserlian phenomenological method never before explored. -/- In order to clarify Husserl's eidetic method of inquiry, I propose a new way of thinking about the imagination - as direct intuitive presentation (eigentliche anschauliche Vorstellung) and as horizonal-nexic level of consciousness exhibiting the neutrality, freedom, and possibility as its essential features. Following Husserl's studies of the imagination, I propose a three-level model of consciousness (realizing, imagining, and eidetic) and explore the dynamic flexibility of each level (as horizon within which acts such as judgments or memories can unfold). This model of consciousness allows for a rethinking of the sources and conditions for the possibility of eidetic phenomenological inquiry - topics Husserl was mostly silent about. -/- Through a rethinking of the model of consciousness, I propose a tight and substantial relationship between the natural (everyday) and artificial (methodological, theoretical) attitudes. I argue that the structure and systems of possibilities pertaining to the artificial attitude - i.e., our actual as well as possible methodological tools - are structurally and well as informationally bound to the structure and system of possibilities pertaining to the natural attitude. In order to explore the nature of the relationship between these two attitudes I argue that we must take a closer look at the structure and abilities of imagining consciousness - the sole nexic-horizonal level that can function both naturally and artificially. This insight regarding the nature of consciousness clarifies Husserl's transcendental idealism in its intimate connection to the everyday. Understanding Husserl's philosophical stance is thus purged of all possibility of mistakenly labeling it as entailing immanent detachment, solipsism, or Platonic idealism. (shrink)

This paper presents a philosophical analysis of three cognitive states familiar and important to psychoanalysts—phantasy, neurotic-belief, and belief-proper. It explores the differences among these three propositional attitudes and finds that the development of secondary process capacities of reality testing and truth directness out of earlier primary process operations plays a crucial role. Difficulties in the proper typing of cognitive states are discussed, as are the consequences of such confounds. This use of a philosophical method serves to sharpen the familiar psychoanalytic (...) clinical concepts of phantasy and neurotic-belief. In addition, these same clinical concepts, once properly specified, have much to offer the philosophy of mind, where current understanding of representational cognitive states is restricted to those that are largely conscious and rational. When psychoanalytic concepts such as phantasy and neurotic-belief can be better integrated within the discipline of philosophy of mind, both philosophers and psychoanalysts will have a more complete and adequate theory of mind. (shrink)

Nach einer neueren, angloamerikanischen Forschungsthese ist Phantasie bei Aristoteles keine bloß repräsentierende Einbildungskraft, sondern das Vermögen, die blinden Daten der Wahrnehmung zu interpretieren und ihnen allererst gegenständlich informative Bestimmtheit zu verleihen. Folgende Abhandlung zeigt, daß diese Deutung auf einem Mißverständnis der dunklen zentralen Textstelle De anima III 3 beruht. Während Aristoteles den strengen Begriff der Phantasie von ihrem metaphorischen Begriff unterscheidet, führt die Verwechslung beider Aspekte zu einer Subjektivierung der Wahrnehmung und zu einer Kognitivierung der Phantasie, die (...) bei Aristoteles ein rein sinnliches Vermögen ist. Dadurch wird die deutliche Zäsur in der Begriffsgeschichte von phantasia, imaginatio und Einbildungskraft eingetrübt, die Aristoteles und die Antike von Avicena und Kant trennt. (shrink)

The author compares the linguistic philosophies of Fichte and Hegel, concluding that Hegel's position ismore comprehensive than Fichte's. Fichte and Hegel share essential suppositions about language andphilosophy, best seen in their remarks on Phantasie, schematism, and especially the idea of unity. The issueof recognition is the primary point of difference between them. Fichte sees man's desire for recognition inthe transformation of signs from visual to audible; for Hegel, however, man's desire forrecognition is prior to Fichte's placement of it. Whereas (...) for Fichte, man desires to express his thoughts assoon as he realizes that another man is reasonable, for Hegel, man desires to objectify his thoughts, orvalue, at this moment. With this fundamental difference in their conceptions of recognition, Fichte andHegel end up with very different conceptions of language that reflect in some ways their differingconceptions of philosophy as a whole. The author closes by corroborating this finding through an analysisof their respective treatments of memory. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss the definitional problems of altered states of consciousness and their potential relevance in phenomenological investigation. We suggest that visionary states or visionary phantasy working induced by psychedelics, as extraordinary types of altered states, are appropriate subjects for phenomenological analysis. Naturally, visionary states are not quite ordinary workings of the human mind, however certain cognitive psychological and evolutionary epistemological investigations show that they can give new insights into the nature of consciousness. Furthermore, we suggest that contemporary (...) inquiries concerning altered states in consciousness studies give an opportunity to complete the contemporary phenomenological investigations of phantasy with the notion of visionary phantasy. Here we propose that the similarities and differences between Dieter Lohmar’s weak phantasy and Benny Shanon’s concept of vision are precisely discernible, and, consequently, it may be possible that weak phantasy and visionary phantasy are situated on the two outermost poles of the colorful spectrum of phantasy activity. (shrink)

(2002). Phantasy and Wish: A Proper Function Account for Human A-Rational Primary Process Mediated Mentation. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 80, No. 1, pp. 1-16.

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The aim of the paper is to shed light on the concept of cataleptic phantasy, which in Stoic fhiilosophy has been the kriterion of true knowledge. On the basis of original texts of Stoic fragments the author points out specific subjective and objective symptoms of its cataleptical chracter, distinguishing at the same time strictly between sensory ane non-sensory kind of Stoic phantasies. The author shows, that the way from a cataleptic phantasy to a cognitive content is not a straightforward one (...) and that it is the logical menaning that makes it possible. Thus the author inclines clearly to the rationalist interpretation of Stoic epistemology, which, contrary to sensualistic approaches, puts the stress on the importance of non-sensory cataleptic phantasy as the kriterion of true knowledge in Stoic Philosophy. (shrink)

Introduction: identity as phantasy in Enlightenment in France and Germany -- The man with too many qualities : the young herder between France and Germany -- The language of cultural identity : Diderot to Nietzsche -- Strange classicism : aesthetic vision in Winckelmann, Nietzsche, and Thomas Mann -- Classicism and gender transformation : David, Goethe, and Stal -- The French Revolution and the problem of time : Hegel to Marx.

My goal is threefold. First, building on the basis of Husserl’s phenomenology of the imagination, I will argue that phantasy is a specific type of intentional experience, which intends its objects as neutralized presentifications. Second, I will turn to dreams and argue that non-lucid dreams are unconscious phantasies, which cannot be conceived in the above-mentioned way. This realization will bring us to the third task. When recognized as the most extreme form of unconscious phantasy, dreams compel us to raise anew (...) the fundamental question: what is the nature of phantasy experience? According to the perspective I will here develop, phantasy is a specific field of experience that lies between two extremes: the fully translucent mode of the as if consciousness and the thoroughly opaque mode of absorption. Most of our phantasies, both conscious and unconscious, voluntary and involuntary, are lived somewhere between these two extremes. (shrink)

In this paper I draw from Husserl’s lectures on ethics and manuscripts on phantasy to clarify the role and the structure of aesthetic education within a phenomenological theory of value experience. First, I show that Husserl’s take on emotions as material contents of value experiences involves the problem of justifying the validity of the relation between factual emotional states and ideal values. I then suggest, on the basis of some of Husserl’s phenomenological arguments on phantasy, that this discrepancy can be (...) bridged through the enjoyment of art – that is, through a process of aesthetic education. I will focus, as Husserl does, on theatrical art as a case study. My aim is to support the claim that artistic phantasy offers us the possibility of an education of emotions by helping us to progressively explore the eidetic structure of emotional states in their individuality, but regardless of their isolated here and now (that is, of their factual occasionality). The first part of the argument refers mainly to the last chapters of Husserl’s Einleitung in die Ethik (1920/1924). The second part focuses on a 1918 manuscript. I conclude by hinting at how the idea of a phenomenological aesthetic education could help providing a coherent interpretation of Husserl’s ethics, while also contributing to the ongoing debate about fictional objects. (shrink)

The epistemological problem of the truth of memory cannot be resolved without establishing a clear distinction between recollection and phantasy. Husserl’s position in this regard is both paradoxical and compelling. It is paradoxical because Husserl repeats his antiskeptical intention many times; but nevertheless in his phenomenology, recollection and phantasy are almost completely identical. Perhaps no philosopher has so radically approached the experience of remembering and the experience of fantasizing as Husserl. But at the same time, the recognition of this fundamental (...) similarity is precisely what allows the phenomenologist to avoid empiricist misunderstandings and thus approach the problem of the distinction between recollection and phantasy in a much more persuasive way than the traditional one. In this paper, I will first try to show how and why Husserl approaches recollection and phantasy. Then I will try to show how it is possible to establish a clear distinction between these two phenomena without misunderstanding the possibility of false memory. (shrink)

Assuming the importance of Alfred Schutz’s “protosociology” in social theory as a given, the paper tries to explore its philosophical core, treating Schutz’s sociophenomenology as an answer to the most fundamental questions of phenomenology, such as evidence and phenomenological reduction. It analyses Schutz’s point of departure – the problematization of Max Weber’s concept of the meaning of social action and its deepening by means of Henri Bergson’s and Edmund Husserl’s notion of time – and tries to unravel the double structure (...) of consciousness, revealing increasingly its complex temporal character. Brentano’s and Husserl’s double intentionality, seeming to offer a kind of “decent realism” in modern philosophical context, in Schutz turns out to be marked by the profound pastness of reflexive consciousness, reaching the primary stream experience only by means of primary and secondary acts of remembrance, re-effectuated intersubjectively in acts of phantasying about future, thus constituting the very core of meaning, with its reference to external objects. It appears that only analysing this mode of phantasying in reference to its motives that we can solve the conundrum of realism in its modern shape. (shrink)

According to Davidson, an agent S acts for a reason if S has a pro-attitude towards actions of a certain kind, and if S believes that her action is of that kind. Reasons not only explain actions, but they also justify them. Given this account of rational action, how do we explain what happens when an agent acts irrationally? Psychoanalysis seems to explain irrational behaviour by extending the domain of rational explanation into the unconscious, and Davidson himself admits that many (...) of the reasons and desires that lead to action may not be conscious. But does the appeal to unconscious beliefs and desires fill in the required explanatory gap? I shall argue that it does not. Borrowing Richard Wollheim’s distinction between “acting on phantasy” and “acting on desire” to show how ordinary action differs from deeply irrational activity, I shall argue that irrational activity differs from rational action, not only in terms of the kinds of beliefs and desires involved, but also in terms of the structure of the relationship between mental states and action. (shrink)

The aim of my essay is to distinguish the aspects of the filmic experience that are decisive in relation to the film’s capability to sensitize the viewer to social issues in Williams’s sociology of culture. In order to do that, I will take into consideration Williams’s understanding of film as a particular medium that is connected with the general dramatic tradition and is able to realize a total expression of the structure of feeling rooted in every aspect of community life. (...) On the basis of Williams’s understanding of film, I will analyze the film’s potential for social innovation from the standpoint of the viewing subject. In the later part of my essay, I will argue that the filmic experience’s capability to promote phantasies is a decisive element in relation to the expressive power of the film. I will analyze the role of phantasy in relation to the socially innovative potential of film in the accounts of the filmic experience provided both by Williams and by other authors that follow in Williams’s footstep by conceiving the filmic flow as a gaze located outside the viewer. Finally, I will draw my conclusions concerning the elements of the filmic experience that are decisive in relation to the film’s potential for social innovation. (shrink)