Online research in philosophy

What does it mean to say that imagination plays a role in moral reasoning, and what are the theoretical and practical implications? Engaging with three traditions in moral theory and confronting them with three contexts of moral practice, this book offers a more comprehensive framework to think about these questions. The author develops an argument about the relation between imagination and principles that moves beyond competition metaphors and center-periphery schemas. He shows that both cooperate and are equally necessary to cope with moral problems, and combines insights of different theories and disciplines to explore how this works in practice.

Aristotelian imagination -- A Bonaventuran synthesis -- Imagination in Bonaventure's Meditations -- Exercising imagination: the Meditationes vitae Christi and Stimulus amoris -- From "wit to wisedom": Langland's Ymaginatif -- Imagination in translation: Love's myrrour and The Prickynge of love -- Conclusion.

Recreative Minds develops a philosophical theory of imagination that draws upon the latest work in psychology. This theory illuminates the use of imagination in coming to terms with art, its role in enabling us to live as social beings, and the psychological consequences of disordered imagination. The authors offer a lucid exploration of a fascinating subject.

In this book Jane Kneller focuses on the role of imagination as a creative power in Kant’s aesthetics and in his overall philosophical enterprise. She analyzes Kant's account of imaginative freedom and the relation between imaginative free play and human social and moral development, showing various ways in which his aesthetics of disinterested reflection produce moral interests. She situates these aspects of his aesthetic theory within the context of German aesthetics of the eighteenth century, arguing that Kant’s contribution is a bridge between early theories of aesthetic moral education and the early Romanticism of the last decade of that century. In so doing, her book brings the two most important German philosophers of Enlightenment and Romanticism, Kant and Novalis, into dialogue. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers in both Kant studies and German philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

This volume explores the relationship between Kant's aesthetic theory and his critical epistemology as articulated in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of the Power of Judgment. The essays, written specially for this volume, revise our understanding of core elements of Kant's epistemology, such as his notions of discursive understanding, experience, and objective judgment. They also demonstrate a rich grasp of Kant's critical epistemology that enables a deeper understanding of his aesthetics. Collectively, the essays reveal that Kant's critical project, and the dialectics of aesthetics and cognition within it, is still relevant to contemporary debates in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and the nature of experience and objectivity. The book also yields important lessons about the ineliminable, yet problematic place of imagination, sensibility and aesthetic experience in perception and cognition.

In this illuminating study of Kant's theory of imagination and its role in interpretation, Rudolf A. Makkreel argues against the commonly held notion that Kant's transcendental philosophy is incompatible with hermeneutics. The charge that Kant's foundational philosophy is inadequate to the task of interpretation can be rebutted, explains Makkreel, if we fully understand the role of imagination in his work. In identifying this role, Makkreel also reevaluates the relationship among Kant's discussions of the feeling of life, common sense, and the purposiveness of history.

This book argues that Kant's transcendental idealism has been misinterpreted: it denies not simply the super-sensory reality of space, time, and appearances, but their reality outside imagination as well. After adducing extensive and explicit textual evidence in its favor, Waxman shows this interpretation to be essential to the Transcendental Deduction, the affirmation of things in themselves, and the attempt to surmount Hume's scepticism. He further argues that Kant's much-neglected claim that, besides himself, "no psychologist has so much as even thought that the imagination might be a necessary constituent of perception," should be construed so that even our consciousness of sensation itself (visual, tactile, etc.) is impossible without imagination. A compelling and original contribution to Kantian scholarship, Kant's Model of the Mind will also bear close examination by students and scholars of Hume, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of science.

In this thesis it is argued that Kant's Copernican turn depends on his doctrine of the imagination, and that by understanding the role of imagination as symbolic rather than schematic, the resources are provided to show that his critical philosophy has more radical possibilities than those of his post-Kantian critics. To display this, it is first pointed out that the crucial role the imagination plays in Kant's Copernican turn is not fully developed in his first Critique. Next, it is argued that Kant's doctrine of the imagination is not fully realized until the third Critique in which Kant radicalizes his notion of constructivism by introducing a distinction between determinative and reflective judgments. Finally, it is suggested that while Hegel believes that Kant?s idealism is not dynamic enough to support a full-fledged constructivism, in fact, when Kant?s mature doctrine of the imagination is taken into account, this is no longer the case because Kant believes that our particular experiences of the world unfold artistically and creatively according to the work of the imagination. It is suggested, therefore, that in many ways Kant anticipates the developments of thinkers such as Hegel and other post- Kantians and may even continue to lie beyond them.

My goal in this paper is to develop our understanding of the role the imagination plays in Kant’s Critical account of geometry, and I do so by attending to how the imagination factors into the method of reasoning Kant assigns the geometer in the First Critique. Such an approach is not unto itself novel. Recent commentators, such as Friedman (1992) and Young (1992), have taken a careful look at the constructions of the productive imagination in pure intuition and highlighted the importance of the imagination’s activity for securing the universality of geometry knowledge. Specifically, as their respective examinations bring to light, it is only with due attention to the imagination that we can make sense of how a ..

The Hypocritical Imagination: Between Kant and Levinas is an outstanding contribution to this vacuum. Focusing on Kant and Levinas, John Llewelyn takes us on a dazzling tour of the philosophical imagination. He shows us that despite the different treatments they accord to the imagination, there is much to be gained from comparing these two key thinkers. From Kant, Llewelyn shows how the imagination is the common root of all understanding. He contrasts this with the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, for whom the imagination plays an ambivalent role both as necessary for and a threat to recognition of the other. John Llewelyn also introduces the importance of the work of Heidegger, Schelling, Hegel, Arendt, and Derrida on the imagination and what this work can tell us about the relationship between the imagination and ethics, aesthetics, and literature.