Transcendental Imagination Research Articles

플라톤의 ‘무시케’ 교육과 이성의 관계: ‘시가’의 내용을 중심으로

This study was designed to clarify the relation of ‘mousike’ education in the Republic of Plato and the development of Reason, focusing on the education of poetry. Mousike is composed of works of art, and is considered as the foundation of the development of reason. According to Gadamer, works of art make it possible to possess the truth, in the sense that they bring to light what is otherwise constantly hidden and withdrawn. This gives support of the argument of Plato that Mousike makes foundation of reason. However, in interpreting on the poetry of Homer, Gadamer’s theory of arts is not sufficient to explain mousike education. Plato, criticizing the poetry of Homer, insists that God isn’t the cause of all things but only of good ones. Plato’s sense of good poetry is able to arouse ‘transcendental imagination’. In virtue of it, a learner of a good poetry, instead of obsessing over the particular images in the poetry, conceive of ‘the Good’. Furthermore, a learner of Mousike is able to understand one’s life in the light of the idea of the Good. In virtue of the transcendental imagination, one is able to think of the universal beyond the particulars given by way of sensation as well as acquire the self-understanding which can recognize the ignorance of oneself. Mousike Education makes it possible for a learner to develop reason through transcendental imagination and selfunderstanding.

Gift and Respect: Heidegger's Kant as Taught by Derrida

In this article, I focus on the reading of Heidegger's Kant that Derrida offers in his recently published 1978-9 seminar Donner le temps II (§§12–3). Here Derrida tracks across Heidegger's text the auto-affective or auto-dative structure (namely, the originary synthesis of spontaneity and receptivity) in which the Kantian conceptions of the experience of time and of transcendental imagination converge, and which is seen as scandalously underpinning the conception of respect. In particular, I draw attention to the moment in which Derrida originally accounts for the structure of the Kantian respect as the movement of abandonment or delivery over to the event which he also ascribes to other figures of freedom (or unconditionality without sovereignty) explored in his later writings. My hypothesis is that, in doing so, Derrida may be building a bridge between two thoughts of imagination: on the one hand, imagination as a figure of his early differance, and, on the other hand, imagination as the non-sovereign freedom that undergirds his late work on sovereignty.

The Transcendental Grounds of Novalis’ Conception of Life as Poetical Work

Abstract The aim of the present paper is to show Novalis’ complete belonging to the history of transcendental philosophy by bringing out the connection between his conception of poetry and the issue of transcendental imagination in Kant and Fichte. Given that solving this problem is the main issue around which Novalisian thought is structured, an attempt is made to consider the writing style adopted by the author as necessary to fulfill this task, and not as an arbitrary rhetorical choice. The connection between poetry and philosophy is then explored in the practical role it has to play among human beings, namely, that of revealing the meaning of the whole reality as a manifestation of the absolute. Thus, life itself is properly displayed by the singular existences as absolute creativity, such as that of poetical creations.

超越论想象力的存在论重构功能——海德格尔《康德与形而上学疑难》研究

超越论想象力的存在论重构功能——海德格尔《康德与形而上学疑难》研究

Der Andere in mir. Zur phantasmatischen Bildung des Selbst in der Trauerarbeit bei Derrida

The article focuses on the phantasmatic constitution of the self in Derrida’s deconstructive work of mourning. In contrast to Freud, Derrida does not merely analyse inner-psychic mourning processes that only occur after a concrete experience of loss which can be successfully processed. Rather, he explores the possibilities of an ‘impossible mourning’ that always-already begins before the actual loss of a desired object and never comes to a closure. Because the phantasmatic incorporation of the transcendent other both opens up and undermines the subject’s self-relation in the work of mourning, it is assigned a quasi-transcendental status: quasi-transcendental insofar as the conditions of the possibility of being oneself simultaneously mark the conditions of the impossibility of having recourse to a self-present and self-identical subject. The aim is to work out the key role of Derrida’s modification of transcendental imagination, whose syntheses are at work in the spectral images of the other that haunt us in a ghostly way. As an image of the other within me that gazes at or affects me in the imagination and thereby conditions my phantasmatic constitution as a split self, its internalised trace forms the inaccessible place of self-formation in the work of mourning.

Kant on Decomposing Synthesis and the Intuition of Infinite Space

In the Transcendental Aesthetic of the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant famously claims that we have an a priori intuition of space as an ‘infinite given magnitude’ (A25/B39f.). Later on, in the Transcendental Analytic, he seems to add that the intuition of space presupposes a synthetic activity of the transcendental imagination. Several authors have recently pointed out that these two claims taken together give rise to two problems. First, it is unclear how the transcendental imagination of a finite mind could ever result in the intuition of an entity that is infinitely large. Second, Kant claims that our intuition of space has a ‘whole-prior-to-its-parts’ structure, such that its parts are given only as limitations of the whole, while synthesis is compositional and has a ‘parts-prior-to-their-whole’ structure, because it consists in first running through and then taking together the parts of a sensible manifold. I will solve these two problems by showing that Kant thought that synthesis does not always have a compositional structure but that there is also a form of ‘decomposing’ synthesis, which has a whole-prior-to-its-parts structure. Building on similarities between Kant, Edmund Husserl and G. W. F. Hegel, I will argue that infinite space is given to us in intuition by precisely such an activity of decomposition, one that allows us to differentiate between finite spatial objects and the unlimited phenomenal horizon in which they appear.

Das Verhältnis von Subjektivität und Zeit bei Kant und Schopenhauer

Abstract This paper focuses on Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s models of self-consciousness and their specific relation to time. It aims to show that genuine philosophical theories can explain the idiosyncratic relation between ourselves and the world without relying on pure metaphysical speculations or strictly empirical and phenomenally oriented conceptions, as many contemporary proponents of analytic philosophy entail. The first groundbreaking doctrine in this regard is Kant’s transcendental theory of apperception, which unfolds a new theoretical dimension of thinking, grounding the logical unity of thought in the pure, originally synthetic unity of the subject itself. In order to constitute a structural order within the appearing phenomenal world, Kant conceptualizes a theory of self-affection in the second edition of the Critique of pure reason, positing a dynamic relation between the spontaneously acting intellect and the purely receptive inner sense of time as a result of productive transcendental imagination. The problematic relation between self-reliance and empirical consciousness that Kant did not resolve completely led to various subsequent transformations of Kant’s transcendental principles, one of which boasts Schopenhauer as a prominent but rarely considered representative. Schopenhauer’s systematic approach consists in a modified version of Kant’s transcendental idealism, which ties the Kantian subject of logical and transcendental unity to an intuitive corporeal individual that can only conceptualize itself as an original, willing subject. The Schopenhauerian subject unfolds its empirical character in accordance with its own inner impulses and motivations, which manifest themselves in time but can only be interpreted as a phenomenal representation of a higher, metaphysical unity, which Schopenhauer calls the will as a thing in itself. Schopenhauer reaches his final metaphysical conclusion via a problematic analogy, positing another perspective on the corporeal nature of the individual which, by means of abstraction, can be extended to the whole phenomenal world. Therefore, Schopenhauer interprets the underlying (intelligible) character of the subject and the phenomenal world as a whole as a timeless, omnipresent will to live which can be temporally experienced within the nature of our own subjectivity.

The Imagination in German Idealism and Romanticism ed. by Gerad Gentry and Konstantin Pollok

Reviewed by: The Imagination in German Idealism and Romanticism ed. by Gerad Gentry and Konstantin Pollok Jessica J. Williams Gerad Gentry and Konstantin Pollok, editors. The Imagination in German Idealism and Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xii + 267. Cloth, $99.99. In his introduction, Gerad Gentry notes that "the imagination is important not only because it is central to one of the most productive and influential periods in the history of philosophy, but also because it represents a topic of substantial relevance to contemporary debates in philosophy" (2). Readers with contemporary interests in the imagination who are looking for a general introduction to its treatment by German Idealists and Romantics will be disappointed. Most of the essays in this volume presuppose familiarity with the respective philosophers and their technical vocabularies. Specialists, especially those who work on German Idealism, will find much of interest in this volume, which is divided into three parts: "Kant and the Imagination" (part 1), "The Imagination in Post-Kantian German Idealism" (part 2), and "The Imagination in German Romanticism" (part 3). As a Kant scholar, I found the essays in part 1 especially rewarding. Each of these essays contributes to current debates in the secondary literature. In his contribution, Clinton Tolley addresses Kant's claim that the imagination is "a necessary ingredient in perception itself" and pursues a Sellarsian line of interpretation that takes the role of imagination to be that of generating complex images of objects. Tolley argues that while sensibility provides intuitions independently of the imagination and the understanding, the imagination generates images of intuitions, which are the representational content of perception. Tolley [End Page 824] briefly gestures at the role of the imagination in generating a priori representations of space and time, a topic that Tobias Rosefeldt treats in significant detail in his contribution. While the recent scholarship on this topic has focused almost exclusively on the role of the imagination in generating the a priori representation of space, Rosefeldt focuses instead on the role of the transcendental imagination in generating the a priori representation of time, in particular, the representation of the direction of time, which makes his essay a particularly important one for the current debate. Günter Zöller argues that to properly understand the imagination's contribution to cognition, and especially the sense in which it is "productive" without being creative, we must pay attention to the metaphors that Kant uses to describe the function and status of the imagination, which come from biology and chemistry. This essay is a welcome contribution to the recent literature that highlights how Kant's interest in the emerging special sciences shaped the critical philosophy. While the first three essays deal with the imagination's contribution to cognition, Keren Gorodeisky considers the free lawfulness of the imagination in aesthetic judgments. This is part of her overarching account of the unity of reason in Kant, one that preserves the fundamental differences between theoretical, practical, and aesthetic judgments while also accounting for their underlying unity in terms of lawfulness. While she is right to emphasize that aesthetic judgments are made through feeling, and thus arise from a fundamentally different source than cognitive or practical judgments, I found it curious that she did not discuss the role of reflection in aesthetic judgments, which connects aesthetic judgments with reflective judgments in science. Even if one does not accept all of the details of her interpretation, she offers a compelling account of the centrality of the imagination for all aspects of human rationality. The essays in part 2 address the way that later German Idealists extended and modified Kant's account of the imagination. Johannes Haag considers how Fichte's account of the imagination as "the ground of both the categories and objects of experience" nevertheless tries to preserve objectivity (109). Meghant Sudan examines Hegel's treatment of the imagination as unifying the receptive and reflective capacities of the mind. Gerad Gentry continues themes from Gorodeisky's essay and examines Hegel's treatment of the free lawfulness of the imagination as the key to the necessity and unity of reason. In part 3, Michael Forster and Kristin Gjesdal address the role of the imagination in interpretation...

Die Zeit der Einbildungskraft - Die Rolle des Schematismus in Kants Erkenntnistheorie

Abstract In this paper, I focus on Kant’s doctrine of figurative synthesis. Figurative synthesis is the result of the activity of productive transcendental imagination. This is the chief problem of the so-called “second proof step” in Kant’s deduction of the categories according to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. The pure original synthetic apperception forms in the inner and outer sense - i. e. in time and space - by self-affection structures of order that make it possible to cognize empirical objects. The order of space and time through figurative syntheses (formal intuitions) must be distinguished on the one hand from space and time as forms of intuition and on the other hand from the order of the manifold given in space and time (intuition of particular contents). This clarifies the differences and relations between the constitutive noetic faculties of our knowledge apparatus.

Kant's Idea of Association and Passive Synthesis

When Kant discusses the comprehensive role of transcendental imagination, he mentions the role of an empirical synthesis, which is the basis of perceptual activity, but if it is based on empirical synthesis then the contradiction of a priori comprehensive ability and empirical synthesis has occurred, and the relationship between active synthesis and passive synthesis of consciousness has now become a problem that must be solved. The description of the association idea has already incorporated the passive synthesis component, which actually provides a solution to this contradiction.

The Imagination in Kant and Fichte

Traditionally, imagination has been dismissed or devalued by philosophy. For centuries, it was considered a minor and secondary function in the constitution of our worldview. And this holds true for both its reproductive and productive aspects. In this paper, it will be argued that the view of the imagination changed radically after Kant, because he considered imagination not only a fundamental active faculty in the process of knowledge but also an authentic creative force, present both in aesthetic experience and in artistic production. With this he prepared the way for Fichte, Schelling and the Romantics, transforming it into an inventive activity, linked to genius and freedom, but at the same time, builder of our reality. Fichte is completely faithful to Kant’s theory of transcendental imagination, but, as it will be argued, he presents it from a different conception of philosophy, which will allow him to expand, deepen, and make it the basic faculty of man. Fichte took his principle, the last explanatory ground of the system, from the second Critique, from the Kantian idea that the key to the whole edifice of reason lies in practical reason. And so his starting point was the Thathandlung, the absolute action, without further conditions. This would give rise to a holistic vision, where the unity underlies the different human faculties, in a globalizing process led by the imagination, which creates new spheres of freedom, constructing all human activity, whether theoretical, practical, aesthetic or political.

PROBLEMATIC MOMENTS OF PRODUCTIVE IMAGINATION ABILITY APPROACH IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF IMMANUEL KANT

The article provides a sketch of Kant’s cognition theory focusing on the analysis of imagination ability as its fundamental and inseparable component. That was Kant who firstly designed this ability in a separate category, and who examined it in different spheres of life (ontological, gnoseological, aesthetic, etc.). Providing thus, this philosopher gave the impetus to further study of imagination ability in various testing in subsequent scientific views. Attention is paid to the problematic aspects of Kantʼs imagination theory in his various works.In our opinion, a major, but hidden, intonation of all Kant’s imagination studies the search of basic root, from which sensuality and reason grow. The imagination itself could be this root. The first person, who came to this conclusion, was Heidegger. In the first edition of «Critique of Pure Reason» imagination has a clear role and performs a separate, valuable function. However, in the second edition of «Critique of Pure Reason» imagination already loses its ground, becomes a secondary ability, all its functions and features Kant somehow passes to the reason. The results of the transcendental imagination ability are an image and a scheme. An image is the empirical productive ability of imagination. A scheme is the pure ability of imagination. And we think not according to our images and schemes. Transcendental product of imagination is a pure reason concept scheme, the nature of which Kant calls the great mystery.Imagination is present both insensuality and reason. In the former it appears as an act of gripping images, in the latter – as an act of understanding concepts. Imagination is standing between them, it is a synthesizing ability that not just reconciles the data, but also exposes it to other forms of thinking. It combines the universal and the individual, the being and the thinking, the chaos and the order. Reason is possible to effect on sensibility only through the intermediation of imagination. Imagination, though belonging to sensuality, is by nature free and spontaneous action that means it is «subordinate» to reason. Imagination is a transcendental ability, and somehow a transcendence of apperception. Productive imagination is considered to be both ontological and gnoseological component, it is an expression of cognition dialectical nature. Imagination can be elevated to the level of the mind, as it is the driving force of the idea, and it can use the simplest form of knowledge to create the image, to give the impetus to the whole knowledge. Thus, this phenomenon has not been studied in its entirety yet, as well as all the interlacing, connections with the cognition and human natures, laid down by Kant have not been revealed yet.

O PAPEL DA AFINIDADE TRANSCENDENTAL ENTRE OS FENÔMENOS NA TEORIA DO CONHECIMENTO KANTIANA

The article focuses on a concept placed at the core of the A-Deduction, of which the B-Version provides a different but not necessarily better exposition. It is the concept of “transcendental affinity” [transcendentale Affinität] (A 144). This concept is not present in the whole B-Edition of the KrV, and even the term “Affinity” does not appear in the B-Deduction, but only four times in the Transcendental Dialectic, and twice in the Discipline of the Pure Reason. In the economy of the A-Deduction, the concept of “transcendental affinity” plays a central role. It represents indeed the “thoroughgoing connection according to necessary laws” of all the possible phenomena. This connection is presupposed by transcendental consciousness insofar as it has a representation of these phenomena and their relationships, since what all the possible phenomena share is their determination in space and time according to the synthetic unity of the apperception. The concept of transcendental affinity between all the possible phenomena is intimately linked to imagination, which makes this affinity arise by reproducing a phenomenon in space and time according to the a priori laws of understanding. The necessary link between transcendental affinity and imagination represents an important passage in this paper. One goal is to point out that the implications of transcendental affinity are not rejected but rather deepened in the B-Deduction. On these assumptions, we consider the role of the “I think” in the B-Deduction, in order to claim that it implicitly relies upon the concept of transcendental affinity too. The last part of the paper aims to point out that the transcendental affinity between the phenomena describedin the A-Deduction is particularly apt to understand the unity of the representation of nature. To shed light on this point, we will deal with some significant passages from the Opus postumum.

The Imagination in Kant and Fichte, and Some Reflections on Heidegger’s Interpretation

The paper deals with the meaning of the transcendental imagination in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, comparing it with the productive imagination proposed by Fichte in his Wissenschaftslehre of 1794. It also presents Heidegger’s views concerning both Kant and Fichte. Regarding Kant there is also a discussion of the difference between the first and second editions of the First Critique. It may be noted that Heidegger prefers the first edition to the second, since, in his view, the latter leads into German Idealism. In Fichte’s philosophy the imagination plays a considerably larger role than it does in Kant. And Heidegger early on (in 1929) recognizes the importance of Fichte as a philosopher in its own right, and not just, as was customary in the period, a mere transitional figure between Kant and Hegel. The paper concludes with a critique of Heidegger’s views regarding both Fichte and Kant. Though there is an addendum discussing the function of the imagination in the aesthetics of Kant (classicism), in that of Fichte (romanticism), and a brief comparison with Heidegger’s own aesthetics.

Recovering the ‘True Meaning’ of the Pre-Established Harmony: On a Neglected Key to Kant’s Theory of Intuition

Abstract:The paper discusses Kant’s enigmatic claim that his critical philosophy succeeds in articulating a philosophical insight at which Leibniz’s pre-established harmony was ‘truly’ aimed. Kant makes the claim in response to Salomon Maimon’s (mis)reading of his Transcendental Deduction of the Categories, which involves, in Kant’s words, the untenable assumption of a capacity of divine (intuitive) understanding in humans. The paper argues that Maimon’s misreading of Kant’s account of human intuition has found influential followers in contemporary Kant scholarship and that it is based on a failure to distinguish between what Kant calls “mere sensible appearances” and real phenomena of nature. While the former are entirely sensible singularities without unity, the latter are units composed of infinitely many sensible appearances, and their unity requires understanding. Kant thus appeals to a refurbished version of Leibniz’s pre-established harmony of mind and world, which takes the form of an immanent, indubitable, but ultimately inexplicable harmony of the faculties of sensibility and understanding. The paper includes a reconstruction of both the B-Deduction’s argument and the role of transcendental imagination in the proof.

Law and Regulation in Late Modernity

What happens to law when social institutions which ground its normativity become unstable and transitory? How can regulation make sense when fleetingness and fluidity become the enduring property of social structures? The social consequences of globalisation and the rise of the network society have heightened and expanded human agency’s powers of reflexivity vis-a-vis social structures. They have accelerated the process which melts the solid contours of the industrial society, paving the way for the emergence of reflexive or late modernity. These radical transformative processes have increased the agency’s ability to free itself from the constraints of social institutions and enabled it to move beyond the effective reach of traditional forms of social control. Under these conditions, forms of law, which are tied to social structures, lose their determinacy as they try to respond to the fluidity of social processes. This chapter starts by introducing the notion of late modernity before moving on to explore how the law fares under socio-cultural conditions specific to late modern societies. Part One uses the financial global crisis of 2007-2008 as a backdrop against which to formulate a number of concerns regarding the limits of legal regulation in late modernity. Part Two explores the formation and operations of the late modern state, asking if power is separated from politics and has moved to the level of global organisations. Part Three asks what kind of law is emerging de facto in response to the fluidity of late modernity, and how legal imagination envisages the future of law. The chapter concludes by discussing why late modernity, which marks the agency’s heightened powers of reflexivity, appears paradoxically wanting in transcendental imagination and determination.

Razón práctica e imaginación transcendental

This article discusses the foundation and realization of practical reason and the problem of the nihilistic foundation of modern practical reason. From the later two practical imperatives that govern modern and postmodern practice, viz. the performative and the technological imperative, are deduced. For this purpose, the article starts with Kant, the founder of that proposal. Such a discussion is essential if practical reason is to answer the following big question in the light of the problems raised by bioethics and the ecological crisis: What does being a member of the human species mean today?Key words: practical reason, transcendental imagination, Kant, Heidegger.

TIEMPO Y SENTIDO SOBRE LA RECEPCIÓN DE HEIDEGGER DEL ESQUEMATISMO TRASCENDENTAL KANTIANO EN EL PERIODO DE “SER Y TIEMPO”

El presente trabajo intenta mostrar la importancia del Esquematismo Trascendental Kantiano para el programa de “Ser y Tiempo”. El hilo conductor de la argumentación es el siguiente: La pregunta por el sentido del ser interroga por el ser en su darse en cuanto sentido. El tiempo, como sentido del ser, es la dinámica unitaria de la formación de sentido (Sinnbildung). El artículo explica de qué modo Heidegger encuentra en la teoría kantiana acerca de los esquemas trascendentales y de la imaginación trascendental elementos decisivos para elaborar la función ontológica del tiempo como formación y configuración de sentido.

Kant’s View on the Parent-Child Relationship and Its Problems—Analyses from a Temporal Perspective as to the Creation and Rearing of a Being Endowed with Freedom

This article will probe into Kant’s viewpoints about parent-child relationship so as to demonstrate that they are inspiring on the one hand—for example on dealing with the relationship as that pertinent to the thing in itself, but on the other hand, there are many flaws. His strategy on avoiding the difficulty of “creating by man a being endowed with freedom” depends merely on an one-sided comprehension of time, because according to Kant himself, there is a difference as to the time between sensual forms of intuition and expressive form of transcendental imagination. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant gives a profound enunciation with respect to the two and the latter is related to “free causality” and “categorical imperative” in his moral philosophy. Once it refers to the rights of a being endowed with freedom and the time it requires to maintain them, it is problematic to assert that the creation of such beings is not concerned with, in any sense whatsoever, time and the sensual, mortal body. What is more, Kant failed to take into full consideration that parents are also beings endowed with freedom whose rights to the child are not totally dependent on the latter’s inherent rights but on their own inherent basis. Granting parents too few natural rights, Kant on the other hand allocates them too much obligations in that the parent-child relation is unbalanced in his field of view. Thirdly, he gives no consideration as to whether or not the empirical process of rearing children itself can also create some rights, which nevertheless, should be taken into account when temporal elements can be found from the very original parent-child relationship.

Riding Off into the Sunrise: Genre Contingency and the Origin of the Chinese Western

The paradoxical dependence of genre histories on historically accidental acts of naming and on transcendental critical imagination is demonstrated by the Chinese western, a little-understood genre that has become a major part of Chineselanguage cinema over the past two decades. After the genre was proposed in 1984 by the Chinese film theorist Zhong Dianfei, as a realist reaction against the ideological excesses of the Cultural Revolution, its ambiguous status as a Hollywood import quickly became a proxy for larger cultural battles over China's place in an American-dominated international cultural system. Moreover, despite assurances by Zhong and other critics that the genre was not susceptible to Hollywood influence, the production history of the genre from the late 1980s to the present demonstrates a pattern of generic influence and eventual fusion that tracks Chinese state-owned studios' evolution from subsidized propaganda organs to participants in a globalized entertainment industry.