Phenomenology of Productive Imagination: Embodiment, Language, Subjectivity

by Saulius Geniusas, James Mensch (Editor)

Overview

Although 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 is a 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 art concealed 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783838275529
Publisher:	ibidem
Publication date:	03/07/2022
Series:	Body and Consciousness , #2
Sold by:	Libreka GmbH
Format:	eBook
Pages:	318
File size:	276 KB

About the Author

Saulius Geniusas is Professor of Philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His main philosophical interests lie in Continental philosophy, especially phenomenology and hermeneutics. Geniusas is the author of The Origins of the Horizon in Husserl’s Phenomenology (Springer 2012), The Phenomenology of Pain (Ohio University Press 2020) and What is Pain? Descriptive Psychology, Transcendental Phenomenology and Naturalism (in Lithuanian; Phi knygos 2021). He has also edited a number of books on phenomenology, hermeneutics, comparative philosophy, and philosophy of the imagination, including Stretching the Limits of Productive Imagination (Rowman & Littlefield 2018) and What is Productive Imagination? (co-edited with Dmitri Nikulin; Rowman & Littlefield 2018). His research has been published by the main journals in Continental philosophy, such as Continental Philosophy Review, Research in Phenomenology, Human Studies, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology. Geniusas has published more than sixty articles in various philosophy journals and anthologies in English, German, and his native Lithuanian. His works have also been translated into French, Spanish, and Polish. Currently, he is one of the editors of the Social Imaginaries book series, published by Rowman & Littlefield.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 11

Introduction 13

Chapter I What is Productive Imagination? From Kant to Phenomenology 25

Introduction 25

Methodological Considerations 26

Kant on Productive Imagination 28

Productive Imagination in Post-Kantian Philosophy 31

Conclusion 35

Chapter II What is Productive about Reproductive Imagination? Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology of Phantasy and the Constitution of Cultural Worlds 37

Introduction 37

What is Reproduction and What is Reproductive Imagination? 41

Perception and Imagination 49

Memory and Phantasy 55

The Role of Phantasy in the Constitution of Cultural Worlds 61

Conclusion 69

Chapter III Between Phenomenology, Pragmatism and Metaphysics: Max Scheler's Concept of Productive Phantasy 75

Introduction 75

Scheler's Critique of Pragmatism 76

Productive Phantasy and the Genesis of Experience 80

Sensation, Perception and Phantasy 84

The Psychic, Historical and Cultural Dimensions of Productive Phantasy 87

Phantasy and Desire 89

The Development of Productive Phantasy 91

The Limits of Productive Phantasy 93

Life, Spirit, and Productive Phantasy 98

Conclusion 101

Chapter IV Between Phenomenology, Ontology and Philosophy of Culture: Productive Imagination and the Cassirer-Heidegger Disputation 103

Introduction 103

The Historical Setting 104

Productive Imagination and the Subjectivity of the Subject 108

The Copernican Turn 111

Terminus a Quo and Terminus ad Quern 115

Freedom 121

The Possibility of Reconciliation 123

Temporality 125

Conclusion 132

Chapter V From Phenomenology to the Kyoto School: Miki Kiyoshi and the Logic of Imagination 137

Introduction 137

Miki as a Phenomenologist 140

The Standpoint of Contemplation and the Standpoint of Action 143

The Field of Imagination as the Field of Action 146

The Logic of the Imagination as the Logic of Collective Representations 148

The Logic of Imagination as the Logic of Symbols 153

The Logic of Imagination as the Logic of Forms 157

The Logic of Imagination as the Logic of Institutions 160

Conclusion 164

Chapter VI From the Phenomenology of the Body to the Ontology of the Flesh: Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Embodied Imagination 169

Introduction 169

Merleau-Ponty's Early Phenomenology of Imagination 170

Two Forms of the Imaginary in the Sorbonne Lectures (1949-1952) 179

Imagination and Perceptual Faith in The Lectures on Passivity (1954-1955) 186

Phenomenological Ontology and the Imaginary Texture of the Real in "Eye and Mind" 191

Conclusion 201

Chapter VII From Phenomenology to Hermeneutics: Paul Ricœur's Philosophy of Productive Imagination 203

Introduction 203

The Paradox of Irreality 204

Utopian and Constitutive Tendencies: Sartre, Castoriadis and Ricœur 206

The Reproductive Model of Imagination 209

The Productive Model of Imagination 211

Pre-Predicative Imagination and the Genesis of Metaphors 218

The Paradox of Irreality Revisited 225

Conclusion 228

Chapter VIII From Jean-Paul Sartre to Paul Ricœur: Ricœur's Lectures on Imagination Revisited 231

Introduction 231

Where is Pierre? The Paradigm of Absence and Reproductive Imagination 233

Ricœur as Sartre's Follower and Adversary 236

At a Crossroads: Sartre and Ricœur Part Ways 241

Painting as a Form of Productive Imagination 243

Towards a Phenomenology of Productive Imagination 250

Conclusion 253

Chapter IX Productive Imagination and Embodiment 257

Introduction 257

Productive Imagination and the Subjectivity of the Subject 259

Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity 261

Embodied Subjectivity and Imagination 266

Productive Imagination and Embodiment 268

Embodiment and Social Imaginaries 277

Phenomenology of Embodiment and Carnal Hermeneutics: A New Ground for the Philosophy of Imagination? 282

Conclusion 286

References 289

Index 303

Editorial Reviews

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

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