Description
Book SynopsisAlthough productive imagination has played a highly significant role in (post-) Kantian philosophy, there have been very few book-length studies explicitly dedicated to its analysis. In his new book, Saulius Geniusas develops a phenomenology of productive imagination while relying on those resources that we come across in Edmund Husserl's, Max Scheler's, Martin Heidegger's, Ernst Cassirer's, Miki Kiyoshi's, Jean-Paul Sartre's, Maurice Merleau-Ponty's, and Paul Ricoeur's writings, while also engaging in present-day philosophical discussions of the imagination. Investigating the relation between imagination and embodiment, affectivity, perception, language, selfhood, and intersubjectivity, the book provides a phenomenological conception of productive imagination, which is committed to basic phenomenological principles and which is sensitive to how productive imagination has been conceptualized in the history of phenomenology. Against such a background, Geniusas develops a new conception of productive imagination:It isa basic modality of intentionality that indirectly shapes the human experience of the world by forming the contours of action, intuition, knowledge, and understanding. It is not so much a blind and indispensable function of the soul, but an artconcealed in the body, for it springs out of instincts, drives, desires, and needs. The author discloses the unexpected ways in which phenomenology of productive imagination enriches our understanding of embodied subjectivity.
Trade Review"Productive imagination is a concept that has long deserved a special study. Saulius Geniusas traces its importance from Kant and Husserl through 20th century German and French phenomenology. With sweeping scholarship and penetrating analysis, Geniusas opens our eyes to the nature of productive imagination and its relation to embodiment, language, and subjectivity." -- David Carr, Professor Emeritus, Emory University
"Saulius Geniusas' book offers a radically new investigation of the vital relationship between imagination and the body. The writing is clear, persuasive, and extensive in its scholarly range. An important study of indispensable drives of human creativity." -- Richard Kearney, Charles Seelig Professor in Philosophy, Boston College
Table of ContentsIntroduction; What is Productive Imagination? From Kant to Phenomenology; What is Productive about Reproductive Imagination? Edmund Husserls Phenomenology of Phantasy and the Constitution of Cultural Worlds; Between Phenomenology, Pragmatism and Metaphysics: Max Schelers Concept of Productive Phantasy; Between Phenomenology, Ontology and Philosophy of Culture: Productive Imagination and the Cassirer-Heidegger Disputation; From Phenomenology to the Kyoto School: Miki Kiyoshi and the Logic of Imagination; From the Phenomenology of the Body to the Ontology of the Flesh: Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Embodied Imagination; From Phenomenology to Hermeneutics: Paul Ricurs Philosophy of Productive Imagination; From Jean-Paul Sartre to Paul Ricur: Ricurs Lectures on Imagination Revisited; Productive Imagination and Embodiment; Conclusion; References; Index.
