In this paper, I look into personal and political entanglements in Rosa Luxemburg's letters and essays revolving around questions and problems of the revolution. The analysis is informed by Hannah Arendt's theorisation of revolutions in modernity, as well as her reading of narratives within the political. What is intriguing about the Luxemburg/ Arendt encounter is the fact that although both theorists consciously refused to connect themselves with feminist ideas and movements of their times and geographies, their writings have inspired (...) a rich body of feminist theorisations of the political. What I argue is that Luxemburg's ideas and lived experiences of the revolution largely inspired Arendt's theorisation of the revolution as a political phenomenon in the pursuit of freedom, and are opening up new vistas in our understanding of gendered dynamics in historical and contemporary revolutionary events. (shrink)

For some, the imagination is a luxury in the modern age; something which is by turns elusive, difficult to employ and better left to others. But what is it to imagine exactly? How do we go about it, and why is it so important that we imagine for ourselves?

Imagination and memory are often distinguished as fiction and reality, but classical authors, such as Hobbes, have been well aware of their similitudes. And the French writer Stendhal (acknowledging his debt to Hobbes, whose works he read in his youth) is perhaps the novelist to have shown most accurately how, from the moment love became amour passion in the beginning of the 19th century, the power of imagination inside memory began to grow – until it was able to (...) undermine and even cut the link between memory and reality. But the emergence of passionate love creates a new challenge: can we control the powers of passion that we have identified? How can we accept the ideal of freeing the emotions, and simultaneously aim to control them, in order to attain a better life than human beings have had until now? (shrink)

The concept of the imaginary is pervasive within contemporary thought, yet can be a baffling and often controversial term. In Imagination and the Imaginary , Kathleen Lennon explores the links between imagination - regarded as the faculty of creating images or forms - and the imaginary, which links such imagery with affect or emotion and captures the significance which the world carries for us. Beginning with an examination of contrasting theories of imagination proposed by Hume and Kant, (...) Lennon argues that the imaginary is not something in opposition to the real, but the very faculty through which the world is made real to us. She then turns to the vexed relationship between perception and imagination and, drawing on Kant, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, explores some fundamental questions, such as whether there is a distinction between the perceived and the imagined; the relationship between imagination and creativity; and the role of the body in perception and imagination. Invoking also Spinoza and Coleridge, Lennon argues that, far from being a realm of illusion, the imaginary world is our most direct mode of perception. She then explores the role the imaginary plays in the formation of the self and the social world. A unique feature of the volume is that it compares and contrasts a philosophical tradition of thinking about the imagination - running from Kant and Hume to Strawson and John McDowell - with the work of phenomenological, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist and feminist thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Lacan, Castoriadis, Irigaray, Gatens and Lloyd. This makes I magination and the Imaginary essential reading for students and scholars working in phenomenology, philosophy of perception, social theory, cultural studies and aesthetics. Cover Image: Bronze Bowl with Lace , Ursula Von Rydingsvard, 2014. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Lelong and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Photo Jonty Wilde. (shrink)

The emotions pose many philosophical questions. We don't choose them; they come over us spontaneously. Sometimes emotions seem to get it wrong: we experience wrongdoing but do not feel anger, feel fear but recognise there is no danger. Yet often we expect emotions to be reasonable, intelligible and appropriate responses to certain situations. How do we explain these apparent contradictions? Emotion, Imagination, and the Limits of Reason presents a bold new picture of the emotions that challenges prevailing philosophical orthodoxy. (...) Talia Morag argues that too much emphasis has been placed on the "reasonableness" of emotions and far too little on two neglected areas: the imagination and the unconscious. She uses these to propose a new philosophical and psychoanalytic conception of the emotions that challenges the perceived rationality of emotions; views the emotions as fundamental to determining one's self-image; and bases therapy on the ability to "listen" to one’s emotional episode as it occurs. Emotion, Imagination, and the Limits of Reason is one of the first books to connect philosophical research on the emotions to psychoanalysis. It will be essential reading for those studying ethics, the emotions, moral psychology and philosophy of psychology as well as those interested in psychoanalysis. (shrink)

Ricoeur’s reading of analytic philosophy is part of a philosophical plan that focuses on deepening his inquiry into various thematics, some theoretical in nature, others concerned with the history of philosophy. On the theoretical plane, Ricoeur’s interest in the analytic tradition is rooted in the problem of the relationship between language and the world; as regards the history of philosophy, he is interested in the shift from a transcendental philosophy to a contemporary philosophy that is concerned with the world (...) of experience and the actions of a fallible and capable human being. From this perspective, a possible way into a Ricœurian reading of analytic philosophy is through two authors: Ludwig Wittgenstein and Nelson Goodman. In both cases, Ricoeur does not so much oppose the approaches and results of an "analytic philosophy" to those of a "continental philosophy" as seek to renew his reflection on language, imagination, and reference. We can account for this evolution in two stages: first, we will focus on the comparison that Ricoeur makes between the philosophy of the later Husserl and the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein; second, we will reexamine Ricoeur’s reading of Goodman’s general theory of reference. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Literature, Imagination, and Human RightsWillie van Peer“the poet’s function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen”Aristotle: Poetics, 1451aAristotle’s dictum has been of vital importance to the development of literary theory, and its significance can still be felt today. It is the foundation of the distinction we make between journalism and literature, between history and fiction. Literature, Aristotle proposes, (...) is about things that could happen, not about things that have taken place in reality. Literature is thus inscribed in the realm of the imagination. However, imagination does not operate in an epistemological vacuum. A fictional text entertaining no relation with the world would have no meaning. Perhaps giants, dragons and witches do not really exist, and perhaps it is not really possible to cover seven miles with each step of those wonderful boots that Tom Thumb discovered. But we have no difficulty in imagining those things, precisely because they entertain an intimate relationship with forms and things, events and actions that happen in daily life. The details of the relationship between reality and fiction are less important for the present argument than the fact that fiction is embedded in our pragmatic attitudes. 1 Ernst Bloch has given this human tendency a name: The Hope Principle. Our desire for a better world expresses itself in hope, a distinctive feature of the species Homo Sapiens. The importance of the imagination in the project of humanity has received eloquent and systematic treatment in the philosophical work of Hans Vaihinger and Helmuth Plessner. 2 Imagination also gives impetus to history, because it drives us toward the realization of aims and plans that initially lived only in our hearts and minds: “Someone dreaming never remains in the same place.” 3 [End Page 276]Similar things have been asserted about literature, by Horace, Sidney, Matthew Arnold, and others. Reading is supposed to make us better humans, heightening our awareness, increasing our sensibility, and thus indirectly guiding our actions toward the establishment of a better world. Sometimes noble motives are associated with this function. Reading literature, it is then assumed, makes the reader more socially tolerant, more perceptive about other humans, and more politically conscious. This is the so-called Edification Hypothesis. Anthony Savile sums up this view when he submits the thesis that literature has a unique power to make us understand the thoughts and feelings of other human beings. This ethical perspective on literature has been expressed since Greek Antiquity. 4 It will be remembered that Plato condemned literature precisely for this reason: because it diverts our attention from the real world, itself already an imperfect reflection of Pure Ideas. Aristotle rejects this view and develops a theory squarely opposed to that of his teacher. According to him, literature contributes to the elevation of mankind, to paideia. By showing us that which is possible, and by involving us in the inescapable passage of tragic events, readers and spectators are drawn into emotions of fear and compassion, emotions that lead to katharsis, a process that purifies us of megalomania (hubris), safeguarding democratic government and protecting us from unrestrained tyranny. 5The Aristotelian view that literature has an edifying effect had been generally present in Western tradition till about 1800. Until then literature was viewed almost universally as an ethical category. Consider, for instance, the self-evident way in which Richardson prefaces Pamela: “If to divert and entertain, and at the same time to instruct and improve the minds of the YOUTH of both sexes: If to inculcate religion and morality in so easy and agreeable a manner, as shall render them equally delightful and profitable: If to set forth in the most exemplary lights, the parental, the filial, and the social duties....” 6The embarrassment a modern reader may feel when confronted with such overt claims to morality is largely a product of the nineteenth century, when literature came to be seen as a predominantly aesthetic category, eluding all attempts at moral categorization. This movement has resulted in a liberation of literature from moralism. At the same time, it has created nontrivial difficulties in thinking about ethical and political issues, so... (shrink)

This article addresses “Creativity after Computation” by looking into the concept of artificial imagination, namely the machine’s ability to produce images that challenge artmaking and surprise human beings with the aid of machine learning algorithms. What is at stake is not only art and creativity but also the tension between the determination of machines and the freedom of human beings. This opposition restages Kant’s third antinomy in the contemporary technological condition. By referring to the debate on the question of (...) imagination in Kant, Heidegger, and Stiegler, the article suggests that imagination is always already artificial and that it is more productive to develop an organology of artificial imagination. It clarifies the notion of artificial imagination and offers an organological reading through a reinterpretation of Leibniz’s monadology, Kant’s sublime, and Schiller’s aesthetic education against the backdrop of recursive algorithms. (shrink)

This article seeks to examine Ricœur's reflection on metaphor through an intertextual reading. This reading relates The Rule of Metaphor (1975) with lines of thought developed in a series of lectures held at the Centre de recherches phénoménologiques in Paris, from 1973–1974, on the theme From Language to Image, and an essay which appeared in 1978, “The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination and Feeling”. This work starts with an analysis of Ricœur's interpretation of the Aristotelian theory of (...) metaphor, a theory which the French philosopher principally develops in The Rule of Metaphor. In the other two papers, Ricœur develops his metaphorology through a dialogue with Kant and he reformulates in linguistic terms the doctrine of productive imagination and transcendental schematism, which become the ontological sphere on which metaphorical and narrative activity are founded. Through the long journey of language, Ricœur's hermeneutics builds a bridge between Aristotle and Kant. This article examines this link to understand and explain further, also at the epistemological level, the relationship between metaphor and narrative. (shrink)

A widespread claim, which I call ‘the Emotionality Claim’, is that imagination but not supposition is intimately linked to emotion. In more cognitive jargon, imagination is connected to the affect system, whereas supposition is not. EC is open to several interpretations which yield very different views about the nature of supposition. The literature lacks an in-depth analysis of EC which sorts out these different readings and ways to carve supposition and imagination at their joints. The aim of (...) this paper is to fill this gap. I shall argue that existing readings of EC fail to properly account for the emotional asymmetry between imagination and supposition. The tendency is to start from narrow conceptions of both imagination and supposition. I shall argue for a novel interpretation of EC pivoting on different ways a mental state can connect to the affect system. (shrink)

Abstract:The claim is often made that the novel can be an important resource in developing the moral capacities of readers, but how might this work? What would such an education look like for the reader of a novel? This paper explores these questions by working through a specific novel, Jane Austen's Persuasion, and examining how it accomplishes these goals. I argue that Persuasion dramatizes the workings of moral imagination, and I show how this dramatization can affect the reader by (...) refining her imagination and making her more discerning of moral qualities. (shrink)

What is fiction? It permeates contemporary life: via novels we read, stories we tell, box-sets we watch, and as philosophers, thought experiments we use. Many think it should be characterised in terms of a relation to the imagination. In this essay, I’ll consider prominent expressions of this view, as well as rejections of it. Before this, I’ll introduce two methodological approaches that it’s helpful to distinguish.

Disney represents a mythology that is universal because they are rapidly acquiring every possible alternate reality that one cares to enter, except for the sexual realm and the Christian religion realm. When Disney owns all possible significant alternate universes, then only Disney can colonize one's imagination, and only Disney will give him/her the lens through which to perceive any competing claim on understanding his/her ultimate Reality. Well, visual containment helps the psyche stay in the mode and the mood for (...) the various psychic propaganda programs being run, and allows one to enjoy and prolong the fantasy, as well as empty his/her wallet of all possible contents since the only way to experience more Disney is to hand them exactly all of his/her cash. Thus, in short order, Disney has successfully colonized an awful lot of the global imagination, from young to old, male to female, from history to fantasy, and now from right to left. (shrink)

Aristotelian imagination is widely understood as a psychological power by which retained perceptual states recur in consciousness. According to this view, imagination is decaying sense, a part of the psyche that is parasitic on perceptual acts for its content. This paper disputes this reading and provides an alternative account of Aristotle’s concept of imagination. I argue that Aristotelian imagination is a power of the psyche that is both productive like intellect, and presentational like perception. Unlike (...) perception and intellect, however, imagination does not correctly discriminate among beings, and thus cannot be relied upon to give one knowledge of the world. When one accepts this alternative conception of Aristotelian imagination, it becomes clear how it can take on the peculiar epistemic function of allowing a particular serve as the vehicle of a universal thought. This paper argues that Aristotle’s explanation of valid judgments in geometry depends on the imagination to allow the perception of a particular diagram to give rise to the intellectual grasp of a general proposition. (shrink)

During the last decade Castoriadis’ questioning has become a reference point in contemporary social theory. In this article I examine some of the key notions in Castoriadis’ work and explore how he strives to develop a theory on the irreducible creativity in the radical imagination of the individual and in the institution of the social-historical sphere. Firstly, I briefly discuss his conception of modern capitalism as bureaucratic capitalism, a view initiated by his criticism of the USSR regime. The following (...) break up with Marxist theory and his psychoanalytic interests empowered him to criticize Lacan and read Freud in an imaginative, though unorthodox, fashion. I argue that this critical enterprise assisted greatly Castoriadis in his conception of the radical imaginary and in his unveiling of the political aspects of psychoanalysis. On the issue of the radical imaginary and its methodological repercussions, I’m focusing mainly on the radical imagination of the subject and its importance in the transition from the ‘‘psychic’’ to the ‘‘subject’’. Taking up the notion of “Being” as a starting point, I examine the notion of autonomy, seeking its roots in the ancient Greek world. By looking at notions such as “praxis”, “doing”, “project” and “elucidation”, I show how Castoriadis sought to redefine revolution as a means for social and individual autonomy. Finally I attempt to clarify the meaning of “democracy” and “democratic society” in the context of the social imaginary and its creations, the social imaginary significations. (shrink)

Spivak’s contribution to this symposium invites us to think beyond ethics in the abstract and instead to ground it in the “epistemology of the subaltern,” placing emphasis on a “humanities-style education” in thinking precisely from those margins in the interests of “social justice for all.” In my response to her essay, I take up her invitation to “abstract up” my reading of her intervention through the specifics of Gaza.

Yves Citton’sRenverser l’insoutenableis both a thorough critique of the current conjuncture and an attempt to construct a politics to reverse it. With respect to the former, Citton outlines the various ways in which the present should be considered unsustainable, ecologically, economically, politically, psychically, and through its various technological mediations. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Citton proposes a politics that can overcome the untenable conditions of the present. Politics takes two figures here, a politics of pressures, of the loves (...) and hates that drive and determine individual and collective life, and a politics of gestures, of habits and comportments that are both immediate and disseminated through various media. Citton’s political proposals suggest a new political approach, one that focuses on the transindividual, on the affects, imaginations and ideas that form the basis for collective and individual existence. It is on this basis that its merits and limitations should be measured. (shrink)

What is the relation between affective states, such as emotions and pleasure, and imagining? Do the latter cause the former, just as perceptual states do? Or are the former merely imagined, along with suitable objects? I consider this issue against the backdrop of Sartre’s theory of imagination, and drawing on his highly illuminating discussion of it. I suggest that, while it is commonly assumed that imaginative states cause affective responses much as do perceptions, the alternatives merit more careful consideration (...) than they are usually given. (shrink)

This article considers the role of the spectator's imagination in their engagement with the sensory world of cinema. I argue that the spectator's mental images, far from being overwhelmed by those on the screen, are an important element of a complex interaction with the sensations offered and indicated by the film. I develop these ideas through a reading of Krzysztof Kieślowski's Trois Couleurs: Blanc, in which hairdresser Karol is himself unusually dependent on the mental image. This preoccupation of (...) the film directs us to question the parallel images generated by the spectator, and the ways in which they both alienate us from his subjective experience and provoke our sympathies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Literature, Imagination, and Human RightsWillie van Peer“the poet’s function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen”Aristotle: Poetics, 1451aAristotle’s dictum has been of vital importance to the development of literary theory, and its significance can still be felt today. It is the foundation of the distinction we make between journalism and literature, between history and fiction. Literature, Aristotle proposes, (...) is about things that could happen, not about things that have taken place in reality. Literature is thus inscribed in the realm of the imagination. However, imagination does not operate in an epistemological vacuum. A fictional text entertaining no relation with the world would have no meaning. Perhaps giants, dragons and witches do not really exist, and perhaps it is not really possible to cover seven miles with each step of those wonderful boots that Tom Thumb discovered. But we have no difficulty in imagining those things, precisely because they entertain an intimate relationship with forms and things, events and actions that happen in daily life. The details of the relationship between reality and fiction are less important for the present argument than the fact that fiction is embedded in our pragmatic attitudes. 1 Ernst Bloch has given this human tendency a name: The Hope Principle. Our desire for a better world expresses itself in hope, a distinctive feature of the species Homo Sapiens. The importance of the imagination in the project of humanity has received eloquent and systematic treatment in the philosophical work of Hans Vaihinger and Helmuth Plessner. 2 Imagination also gives impetus to history, because it drives us toward the realization of aims and plans that initially lived only in our hearts and minds: “Someone dreaming never remains in the same place.” 3 [End Page 276]Similar things have been asserted about literature, by Horace, Sidney, Matthew Arnold, and others. Reading is supposed to make us better humans, heightening our awareness, increasing our sensibility, and thus indirectly guiding our actions toward the establishment of a better world. Sometimes noble motives are associated with this function. Reading literature, it is then assumed, makes the reader more socially tolerant, more perceptive about other humans, and more politically conscious. This is the so-called Edification Hypothesis. Anthony Savile sums up this view when he submits the thesis that literature has a unique power to make us understand the thoughts and feelings of other human beings. This ethical perspective on literature has been expressed since Greek Antiquity. 4 It will be remembered that Plato condemned literature precisely for this reason: because it diverts our attention from the real world, itself already an imperfect reflection of Pure Ideas. Aristotle rejects this view and develops a theory squarely opposed to that of his teacher. According to him, literature contributes to the elevation of mankind, to paideia. By showing us that which is possible, and by involving us in the inescapable passage of tragic events, readers and spectators are drawn into emotions of fear and compassion, emotions that lead to katharsis, a process that purifies us of megalomania (hubris), safeguarding democratic government and protecting us from unrestrained tyranny. 5The Aristotelian view that literature has an edifying effect had been generally present in Western tradition till about 1800. Until then literature was viewed almost universally as an ethical category. Consider, for instance, the self-evident way in which Richardson prefaces Pamela: “If to divert and entertain, and at the same time to instruct and improve the minds of the YOUTH of both sexes: If to inculcate religion and morality in so easy and agreeable a manner, as shall render them equally delightful and profitable: If to set forth in the most exemplary lights, the parental, the filial, and the social duties....” 6The embarrassment a modern reader may feel when confronted with such overt claims to morality is largely a product of the nineteenth century, when literature came to be seen as a predominantly aesthetic category, eluding all attempts at moral categorization. This movement has resulted in a liberation of literature from moralism. At the same time, it has created nontrivial difficulties in thinking about ethical and political issues, so... (shrink)

The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.In the exegetical tradition of Wittgenstein, there have existed three types of readings: the positivist reading, the ineffability reading, and the resolute reading. In this essay, I will be adhering to the resolute reading, whose roots may be traced to James Conant and Cora Diamond. However, the positivist reading of Wittgenstein having been historically prior and still in currency, it bears first examining the features of this approach.2Two readings (...) may be regarded as paradigmatic of the approach in question: A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth, and Logic and Rudolf Carnap’s “The Elimination of.. (shrink)

_The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche_ first appeared in the _Collected Works_ in 1960. In this new edition bibliographical citations and entries have been revised in the light of subsequent publications in the _Collected Works_, and essential corrections have been made. The book traces an important line of development in Jung's thought from 1912 onwards. The earliest of the papers elaborates Freud's concept of sexual libido into that of psychic energy. In those that follow we see how, Jung, discarding (...) one by one the traditional 'philosophical' hypotheses, gradually arrived at a concept which is even more controversial than psychic energy was in its day ^DDL namely, psychic reality. The book contains the first mention of the archetype in Jung's writings as well as his later views on its nature. There is also a valuable account of the therapeutic uses of 'active imagination' first described in an essay written in 1916. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between Roman school texts and the socialization of the student into an elite man. I argue that composition and declamation communicated social values; in fact, the rhetorical education of the late republic and the empire was a process of socialization that produced a definite subjectivity in its elite participants. I treat two genres of Roman school texts: the expansions on a set theme known as declamation and the bilingual, Greek and Latin, writing exercises known as (...) the colloquia amid the collections of hermeneumata. This article is more broadly concerned with the attitudes toward language use that are learned along with specific literacy skills. Habits of reading and writing and speaking are learned in scenes and contexts that contribute to concepts of the self and more widely of gender and social roles. The encounters and verbal interactions recurrently plot a deviation from violence or a return to civil and familial order through the proper verbal display of the elite speaker. The student speaker's assumption of roles, his training in fictio personae, is a strong training in memory and imagination-pretending to be someone else, pretending to talk like someone else, or pretending to talk on behalf of someone else. That someone else is most important as the schoolboy becomes the voice of or for prostitutes, the raped, slaves, freedmen, women. His was not a neutral ventriloquism in the styles of Latin but a training in the master's mode toward the ready conviction that the speaker can and must speak for others, his subordinates. Roman rhetorical education was a process of persona building, shaping the schoolboy in his future role while excluding others from the very right to become speaking subjects. (shrink)

The turn to Spinoza by many Marxists combines the classic problem of Marxism, that of base and superstructure, economy and ideology, with Spinoza’s challenging assertion of the identity of order of connection of ideas and things. This paper looks at two contemporary neo-Spinozists, Frédéric Lordon and Yves Citton, examining the ways in which their works intertwine economy and ideology, desire and imagination. The point, however, is not to just read Marx with Spinoza, but to use both together to make (...) sense of the imaginary and affective dimension of changes within the economy. (shrink)

Spinoza took it to be an important psychological fact that belief cannot be compelled. At the same time, he was well aware of the compelling power that religious and political fictions can have on the formation of our beliefs. I argue that Spinoza allows that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ fictions. His complex account of the imagination and fiction, and their disabling or enabling roles in gaining knowledge of Nature, is a site of disagreement among commentators. The novels of (...) George Eliot (who translated Spinoza's works) represent a significant development for those who aim to resolve such disagreement in favour of the epistemic value of the imagination and fiction. Although Eliot agreed with Spinoza that belief cannot be compelled, she nevertheless affirmed the potential of certain kinds of fiction to be not only compelling but also edifying. The parallel reading of Eliot and Spinoza offered here raises the question of whether his philosophy can accommodate a theory of art in which the artist is seen to be capable of attaining and imparting dependable knowledge. (shrink)

By offering an original reading of J. G. Fichte's central philosophic work, The Science of Knowledge , through the prism of his much over looked "Journal of Animal Magnetism" this dissertation situates Fichte's later metaphysics of the image within the concerns of contemporary media theory. It does so by taking seriously the political consequences of the historical transformation of the faculty of imagination in age of materialism. Such a reading is made possible by approaching German Idealism through (...) the critical apparatus of 20th century Continental Philosophy . ;In the 19th century, Post-Kantian idealism's designation of the imagination as a faculty was called into question. For instance, with the appearance of Mesmerism and the rise of magnetic psychology, the very validity of the transcendental subject was rendered suspect. The subject's imagination was shown to be transparent to external influence. In his own search for a physical instantiation of idealism Fichte realized that the imagination and its power of imaging was no longer limited to the transcendental subject, but was shown to be a function of material technique. Such a transformation would have far reaching political consequences. Specifically, if Fichte articulated spirit---which defined social wholeness---in terms of the imagination, then the appropriation of the imagination by technological materialism demanded a fundamental rethinking of the communicative ground of the social. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that readers will resist imagining that a character in a story did something morally wrong, even if the story endorses this judgement. This paper argues, first, that readers will not resist if the question of whether that act was wrong is not salient as they read; and, second, that asking a certain question can be part of correctly appreciating a story—even if that question is not in the foreground of the story, and even if the story (...) itself discourages readers from asking it, as is common in some forms of the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’. (shrink)

In this paper, I would like to investigate how Gadamer explores the hermeneutic potential of Kant’s aesthetic theory in the third Critique with regard to the notion of imagination. For the first time, by making some references, Gadamer discussed the question of imagination in his Truth and Method of 1960, and we can read as a further substantial contribution his essay entitled Anschauung und Anschaulichkeit (Intuition and Intuitiveness) published in 1980. Although Gadamer’s approach was influenced by some Heideggerian (...) impulses, he offered another alternative that is completely different from Heidegger’s one. I shall argue that even if the question of imagination is not so much stressed by Gadamer, it proves important to the development and ontological basis of the Gadamerian hermeneutics in Wahrheit und Methode. My hypothesis is that through the themes of intuition and education (Bildung), the imagination is concerned with the human understanding and our interpreting work, thus, its significance transcends the scope of aesthetics. (shrink)

Charles Altieri's Reckoning with the Imagination: Wittgenstein and the Aesthetics of Literary Experience addresses a perceived problem in literary theory.1 That problem is how to reintegrate practices of "close reading" in a field dominated by "grand theory": deconstruction, postcolonial studies, queer studies, New Historicism, and other regimens. Unlike the New Criticism that controlled the reading, writing, and teaching of serious literature in the United States through the 1940s and '50s, in which intricate analysis of text as text (...) was all, Altieri does not begrudge conceptual space to more expansive social-theoretical approaches. But he does deny their trump status, i.e., the idea that their forms of cultural... (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to address the problem known as “the puzzle of imaginative” use, related to the ambiguities of an imagination that sometimes distances us from reality, but at other times, as for example in the use of scientific thought experiments, is used to understand some important aspects of the real world. The problem is closely related to that of imaginative constraints. It will be shown how, particularly in the scientific enterprise, the epistemic value of (...) class='Hi'>imagination depends on the embodiment of imagination itself. The work of scientific imagination, understood as an ability, will be re-read through the most recent studies on Embodied Simulation. This will make it possible to grasp in the imaginative act the link between creativity and method that is essential in the scientific enterprise. (shrink)

This paper provides an account of the experience of empathizing with the fictional characters of literary works, through the lens of Husserl's theory of presentification. Via a critical analysis of Husserl and other phenomenologists, I argue that fictional characters, though lacking embodied presence, can be presentified to the reader in the mode of "as if." Moreover, I claim that imaginative empathy is a guided creative reproduction of sedimented past bodily experiences. This explains why, motivated by imaginative empathetic presentification, not only (...) aesthetic feelings, but also "as if" existential feelings come to the fore. Finally, it shows to what extent presentation and the different modes of presentification are interwoven and function together. (shrink)

Development of global skills to pave the way in the Sustainable Development Goals (SGs) requires institutions around the world to put quality education as one of the pillars for a sustainable economy. The present study employed a descriptive survey research design to capture the brain dominance, learning styles, and reading comprehension of Saudi EFL learners. The study involved a randomly sampled 154 students enrolled in language and reading courses at Qassim University, Saudi Arabia. The results of the study (...) showed that Saudi EFL learners are left-brain dominant in that they consider themselves analytical, logical, methodological, and detail-oriented. Similarly, the distribution of respondents' learning styles, whether visual, auditory, or kinesthetic, is almost equal, indicating that the Saudi EFL learners have distinct learning preferences and processes. Finally, the results revealed that a significant number of students excel in reading, while a smaller number still struggle with it. Hence, Qassim University must implement student-centered language teaching interventions and strategies to realize the vision of the Saudi future. The diversity of Saudi EFL learners necessitates different instructional modalities and processes, and their level of reading performance demands effective interventions to address their language capabilities. (shrink)

This essay argues that William Cavanaugh's ‘Theopolitical Imagination’ uncovers some of the possibilities latent within the Catholic imagination. While his critique of modernity is often persuasive, this essay questions whether Cavanaugh's assessment of modernity can be complemented by a more differentiated approach. What Charles Taylor provides is both a bolstering of Cavanaugh's thesis about the power of the imagination and an alternative: that there is a way of thinking about the relationship between the Church and modernity other (...) than in dialectical terms – namely a ‘Ricci reading’ of modernity. (shrink)

Can the reality of complex moral situations be represented by means other than those of imaginative literature?If we could readily agree with Martha Nussbaum that "certain novels are, irreplaceably, works of moral philosophy" (148), then we might already have an answer to the question of whether or not literature matters. It would matter to us to the exact extent that it might help to make our lives richer, better and fuller. Nussbaum, though, refers only to "certain novels" and not to (...) literature in general. She readily admits that not all novels will suit her interests (45). For every novel that is a major work of moral philosophy, there may be more that are morally indifferent or even reprehensible and damaging. .. (shrink)

Extending work of Wittgenstein, Lakoff and Johnson I suggest that it is the metaphors we rely on in order to conceptualise time that provide an illusory space for time-travel-talk. For example, in the “Moving Time” spatialisation of time, “objects” move past the agent from the future to the past. The objects all move in the same direction – this is mapped to time always moving in the same direction. But then it is easy to imagine suspending this rule, and asking (...) why the objects should not start moving in the opposite direction. This is one way of generating the idea of time-travel “back” into the past. Time-travel-talk essentially involves the unaware projection of fragments of our time-talk – taken from powerful conceptual metaphors – onto the nature of reality itself. Understanding this dissolves away the charm and attractions of such talk. (shrink)

I have rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.A pen is a machine to think with.The writer engages the world not only by living in and reflecting it but also by two dynamic processes, one sensory/motor, the other social. The former involves cycles of writing, reading what has been written, responding to it, and writing again; the latter involves writing, reading to an audience, responding to their reactions, and writing again. Dynamic processes (...) involving brain and world, via perception and behavior, have been of great interest to philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists in recent decades. In contrast to classical cognitive science, enactivism proposes... (shrink)

In an elegant translation, Mary McAllester Jones brings to English-speaking readers the writings of a singular French philosopher of science whose rich intellectual legacy is too little known. Gaston Bachelard, who died in 1962, left us twelve works on the philosophy of science, nine on the poetic imagination, and two on time and consciousness, written in an image-laden style that rejected traditional academic discourse in favor of a subversive, allusive, highly metaphorical way of thinking and writing. Gaston Bachelard, Subversive (...) Humanist gives us a generous introduction to Bachelard's brilliant and idiosyncratic writings about the relation of science, poetry, and human consciousness. The extracts are framed in succinct critical essays that explicate the development of his ideas and clarify his relation to the contemporary French intellectual revolution more commonly associated with Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. The matrix of Bachelard's thought is twentieth-century science, the "new scientific mind" that he dates from 1905 and Einstein's special theory of relativity. Like the discovery of America five hundred years before, the discoveries of mathematics and physics today have undermined our familiar epistemologies. Modern science has forced us to revise our conception of the rational subject and of the relation between reason and reality, subject and object. A "psychic revolution" has accompanied this revolution in reason. If we try to grasp the dialectics of matter and energy in physics, or the dualism of waves and particles, we shall learn to maintain difference and handle complexity; we are shaken out of the reductive, identity-ridden habits of ordinary life and thought. As a writer of science, Bachelard deliberately aimed to rid us of the preconceptions that blind us to the facts, to science as it is now. The same wariness with regard to theory is present in his approach to poetry. For Bachelard, mathematical equation and poetic image alike break with everyday experience. Reading poetic images brings us "the experience of openness, of newness", says Bachelard. The reader "is called upon to continue the writer's images, he is aware of being in a state of open imagination." There is little place for abstract critical theory in Bachelard's view of Poetry. _Gaston Bachelard, Subversive Humanist_ will interest literary scholars, philosophers, and intellectual historians. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Kant’s concept-less schematism (KU, 5: 287) in the thirdCritique1and make three claims: 1) concept-less schematism is entirely consistent with the schematism in the firstCritique; 2) concept-less schematism is schematism with noempiricalconcept as an outcome; and 3) in accordance with 1) and 2), the imagination is free to synthesize the given manifold and leads to judgements of taste without this meaning either that the categories play no role at all or that these judgements are full-fledged (...) cognitive determining judgements. While most commentators read the freedom of the imagination as its independence from the understanding, I argue that the freedom of the imagination is based on a non-determining employment of the pure concepts of the understanding. The freedom of the aesthetic imagination consists in the temporal schematization of the categories without any complementary determination of the empirical concept. (shrink)

In this chapter I will argue against both of these interpretations and will begin to develop an alternate account of imagination in experience. Against those who minimize imagination’s role, I will highlight the distinctive contribution of the imagination to experience. In particular, I will foreground the specific role that the imagination plays in making possible the distinct mental act, intermediate between intuition and experience, that Kant calls “perception [Wahrnehmung]” as the “empirical consciousness [Bewußtsein]” of appearances (cf. (...) B207). Because perception involves images essentially (cf. A120), and because Kant understands experience itself to be a “synthesis of perceptions” (cf. B218), this strongly suggests (against minimalists) that experience, too, will incorporate images into the manner in which it allows us to cognize physical objects. By highlighting the contribution of imagination prior to experience, my own account, therefore, overlaps in part with the readings that seek instead to maximize the role of imagination. Against maximalists, however, I will argue that imagination contributes only in (and after) the transition from intuition to perception, rather than already being at work in the stage of intuition itself. More specifically, I will argue that Kant takes the activity of imagination to make perception possible by acting on already-formed intuitions in order to bring about the consciousness of them, rather than to bring the intuitions about in the first place. I will also argue that this synthesis of intuitions should be kept distinct from the activity of understanding. (shrink)

In business schools, there is a persistent myth according to which management education is, and should be, ‘value-free’. This article reflects on the experiences of two business schools from Finland and Australia in which the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education have been pragmatically used as a platform for breaking with this institutionalized guise of positivist value neutrality. This use of PRME makes it possible to create learning environments in which values and value tensions inherent in management education can be (...) explored and exposed. Inspired by Rorty’s understanding of ethics—notably his discussion of ‘final vocabularies’ and ‘moral imagination’—and Flyvbjerg’s reading of phronēsis, the article discusses an approach to learning that helps both teachers and students in exploring and exposing values in management education by problematizing dominant business school vocabularies, thereby leading to moral development, in the Rortian sense. The article presents a number of final vocabularies that business students come to class with, some learning methods used to challenge these vocabularies through discussion of alternative vocabularies, and the new directions for moral imagination that may result. (shrink)

Assesses Merleau-Ponty’s contribution to ethics as calling for a poetic interplay between perception and imagination, and between silence and solidarity, that reveals our place in the world, and our obligations to ourselves and others. Before his death in 1961, Merleau-Ponty worried about what he saw as humanity’s increasingly self-enclosed and manipulative way of experiencing self, others, and the world—the consequences of which remain apparent in our destructive inability to connect with others within and across cultures. In Merleau-Ponty and the (...) Face of the World, Glen A. Mazis provides an overall consideration of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy that brings out what he sees as a corrective prescription for ethical reorientation that is fundamental to Merleau-Ponty’s thought. Mazis begins by analyzing the key role that silence plays for Merleau-Ponty as a positive, powerful presence rather than a lack or emptiness, and then builds on this to explore the ethical significance of the face-to-face encounter in his thought as one of solidarity rather than obligation. In the last part of the book, Mazis traces the development of what he calls “physiognomic imagination” in Merleau-Ponty’s work. This understanding of imagination is not fancy or make-believe, but rather brings out the depths of perceptual meaning and leads to an appreciation of poetic language as the key to revitalizing both ethics and ontology. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s published works, lecture notes, unpublished writings, and the work of many phenomenologists and Merleau-Ponty scholars, Mazis also offers incisive readings of Merleau-Ponty’s work as it relates to that of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Gaston Bachelard, and Emmanuel Levinas. (shrink)

This paper employs textual analysis and comparative literary methods to examine the mystical and spiritual dimensions of D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love through the lens of sufi mysticism. It posits that Lawrence's engagement with sufi philosophy and literature significantly informed his portrayal of love as a transformative spiritual journey. By scrutinizing Lawrence's use of symbolism, imagery, and character development, particularly in the character of Birkin, the study aims to demonstrate how the novel reflects a profound resonance with sufi concepts, (...) such as the unity of the universe and the mystical path for knowledge. This comparative approach seeks to illuminate how Women in Love can be interpreted as a modernist exploration of spiritual fulfillment within a context of societal disintegration, thereby establishing its place within Lawrence's broader “New Man” fiction. Through Birkin, Lawrence explores the complexities of the human psyche and the potential for transcendence through a passionate, yet spiritually grounded love. The paper’s comparative approach seeks to illuminate how the novel contributes to Lawrence's broader “New Man” fiction, a visionary archetype striving for a harmonious integration of body, mind, and spirit. Lawrence’s “New Man” embodies a radical departure from traditional masculinity that collapsed after the war. The new archetype Lawrence envisions in the light of a sufi reading is not the product of societal expectations but an individual attempt at authenticity. (shrink)

This article takes up film and imagination via the problem of empathy. Proposing a different entry into contemporary polemics over empathy, the ‘empathic imagination’ is reconceptualized as a problematic of form rather than psychological experience. That is, instead of adopting a pre-given notion of empathy to illuminate the relation between film and the spectator's moral imagination, this article considers how that imagination is constituted in and through the image to begin with. After tracing the genealogy of (...) empathy in German aesthetics, the concept is put into play through readings of ‘#Look Beyond Borders’, an online video produced by Amnesty International, and two documentaries by Johan van der Keuken – Face Value and Herman Slobbe. In these works, the facial image is read as the imaginary terrain in which to explore very different notions of what might count as empathy and the empathic imagination in film and media. (shrink)

The death of Peter Winch in 1997 sparked a revived interest in his work with this book arguing his work suffered misrepresentation in both recent literature and in contemporary critiques of his writing. Debates in philosophy and sociology about foundational questions of social ontology and methodology often claim to have adequately incorporated and moved beyond Winch's concerns. Re-establishing a Winchian voice, the authors examine how such contentions involve a failure to understand central themes in Winch's writings and that the issues (...) which occupied him in his Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy and later papers remain central to social studies. The volume offers a careful reading of the text in alliance with Wittgensteinian insights and alongside a focus on the nature and results of social thought and inquiry. It draws parallels with other movements in the social studies, notably ethnomethodology, to demonstrate how Winch's central claim is both more significant and more difficult to transcend than sociologists and philosophers have hitherto imagined. (shrink)

We demonstrate in two experiments that real and imagined body movements appropriate to metaphorical phrases facilitate people's immediate comprehension of these phrases. Participants first learned to make different body movements given specific cues. In two reading time studies, people were faster to understand a metaphorical phrase, such as push the argument, when they had previously just made an appropriate body action (e.g., a push movement) (Experiment 1), or imagined making a specific body movement (Experiment 2), than when they first (...) made a mismatching body action (e.g., a chewing movement) or no movement. These findings support the idea that appropriate body action, or even imagined action, enhances people's embodied, metaphorical construal of abstract concepts that are referred to in metaphorical phrases. (shrink)

Bernard Freydberg’s recent work is a careful and compact study of David Hume’s signature texts: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), An Enquiry Concerning Principles of Morals (1751), and “Of the Standard of Taste” (1757). Contrary to traditional epistemological readings that comfortably situate Hume as an empiricist naturalist, Freydberg argues that he is better understood as a profound thinker of imagination and Socratic ignorance. Hume’s figurative and Platonic argumentation varies in each text, but Freydberg makes a convincing case that (...) his theoretical, moral, and aesthetic philosophies share a proto-phenomenological center in the artistry of human nature and perception. (shrink)