[Xmca-l] Re: Kant's Imagination

[Larry Purss]

This may or may not add clarity. Stephen H Watson wrote this about Kant in a chapter he named [Abysses]
“Kant had proceeded some 600 pages into the first “Critique” before he had reached the problem of abysses. He had faithfully followed out the the Enlightenment’s search for foundations, its peculiar form of the {recherche de la verite} as it was called. He had deployed the schemata of the Enlightenment’s beliefs. Transcendental arguments, always, at least in Kant, were regressive. “If knowledge is to be possible” – it postulated a complete [picture] of knowledge as well as possibility. And, no one doubted it – let alone Kant, for whom Newton, Galileo, and Euclid provided the texts for an archive of pure reason. The systems, the {principiae} were introjected: the schemata for synthesis – the bringing of the manifold of sensation into a unity, the necessary unity of knowledge, of concepts, of judgement, and thereby, of objects. And , consistently, self-critically, and the anathema to all neo-Kantianism, Kant’s {Dialectic} would not allow these ground to go themselves ungrounded. Reason seeks the conditions of the conditions, a higher unity that might ground the certainty of the understanding. The search for grounds, for justification, for legitimation, for necessity is not tangenital to what had gone before: it is necessary. A final grounding is requisite that might satisfy the search, providing a complete determination or ground for logical and ontological possibility such that it might be affirmed, finally and ultimately, that “everything that exists is completely determined. Being thus could be claimed to be fully rational, that is, both orderly and intelligible.
It was Kant’s insight [trope perhaps] to have recognized that this project, the project of all {metaphysics rationalis} was part and parcel theological. In short the project of rationality was {onto-theo-logical}. Because all particularity [manifoldness] would be a limit to this onto-theo-logical project, the search for the conditions of the conditions would be the highest being. {ens summon}. With this ultimate grounding Kant would find completeness. Transcendental logic [as a logic of truth] would have been vindicated. Objectivity would have finally been assured in accordance with a necessity that had driven the search after truth since Plato’s dialectic. {Natural} was Kant’s word for it, and it would bring Hegel’s response that this approach still exhibited an indefensible psychology. This search also contained a certain delirium, an illusion that transcendental ideas could receive “experience”.  This project was a “focus imaginarius”.


This may be too detailed but gives a flavour of the dream underpinning the movement of the imaginal to the representational.

Sent from Mail for Windows 10



From: Ed Wall
Sent: Tuesday, December 8, 2015 3:20 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Kant's Imagination


Annalisa

     There is much that could be said, but I will leave that for others and  briefly quote Casey quoting/paraphrasing Kant:

Kant reinforced imagination’s mediatory role by distinguishing between two kinds of imagining: a reproductive type, which is intimately connected with memory and perceptual apprehension, and a productive type which is contiguous with conceptual thinking. Thus imagination stands precisely midway between sensibility and understanding. Kant says, “The two extremes, namely sensibility and understanding, must stand in necessary connection with each other through the mediation of this transcendental function of imagination.” 

There is, I note, something further which I, personally, need to think about as Casey continues The “transcendental function” referred to in this passage is effected by means of the transcendental schema, a product of productive imagination and the explicit basis for imagination’s mediatory role.

Whatever quibbles one has with all this, most ‘modern’ Western philosophers who have taken on imagination at some point acknowledged Kant’s view of imagination (that doesn’t mean they agreed with it). In other words, Kant’s views regarding imagination were enormously influential in the West.

I should note that Aristotle had similar views.

Ed

> On Dec 8, 2015, at  3:12 PM, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hi esteemed others,
> 
> 
> I would like to follow the practice Mike asked of us to separate topics out to new fibers as they arise, and Kant came up in a few different threads. Since I'm keen to understand more about Kant through reading and considering the discourse of all the eloquent members here, I am taking the initiative to start a new thread.
> 
> 
> Would anyone like to explain (in easy language) why Kant is relevant to our discussion on imagination (and perhaps fantasy)?
> 
> 
> I hope this post doesn't receive an audience of crickets, or even a long list of links to read tomes and tomes of philosophical treatise. I just hope to have a conversation about it.
> 
> 
> Anyone?
> 
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> 
> Annalisa