Imagination

This special issue of Iyyun is dedicated to the concept of the imagination. In the history of philosophy, the notion of “imagination” invites two interwoven lines of inquiry. On the one hand, imagination is tied to the mind’s capacity to picture to itself concrete objects that are not directly present to perception. As such, the imagination is often construed in contrast to perception and associated with a spectrum of mental states – phantasy, hallucination, dream – that are not constrained by the factual. At the same time, a deeper—transcendental— dimension of the imagination has opened up by the Kantian concept of the productive imagination according to which the imagination has a crucial role in the constitution of cognitive experience. Iyyun’s current issue explores the transformations of this concept and its developments from romanticism and phenomenology to post-structuralist thought, with an emphasis on imagination as an expression of human freedom: the freedom to see beyond the boundaries of the possible.