The concept of the imaginary is pervasive within contemporary
thought, yet can be a baffling and often controversial term. In
Imagination and the Imaginary, Kathleen Lennon explores the links
between imagination - regarded as the faculty of creating images or
forms - and the imaginary, which links such imagery with affect or
emotion and captures the significance which the world carries for
us. Beginning with an examination of contrasting theories of
imagination proposed by Hume and Kant, Lennon argues that the
imaginary is not something in opposition to the real, but the very
faculty through which the world is made real to us. She then turns
to the vexed relationship between perception and imagination and,
drawing on Kant, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, explores some
fundamental questions, such as whether there is a distinction
between the perceived and the imagined; the relationship between
imagination and creativity; and the role of the body in perception
and imagination. Invoking also Spinoza and Coleridge, Lennon argues
that, far from being a realm of illusion, the imaginary world is
our most direct mode of perception. She then explores the role the
imaginary plays in the formation of the self and the social world.
A unique feature of the volume is that it compares and contrasts a
philosophical tradition of thinking about the imagination - running
from Kant and Hume to Strawson and John McDowell - with the work of
phenomenological, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist and feminist
thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Lacan, Castoriadis,
Irigaray, Gatens and Lloyd. This makes Imagination and the
Imaginary essential reading for students and scholars working in
phenomenology, philosophy of perception, social theory, cultural
studies and aesthetics. Cover Image: Bronze Bowl with Lace, Ursula
Von Rydingsvard, 2014. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Lelong and
Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Photo Jonty Wilde.
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