Summary
Imagination can be seen 1) as a mental faculty common to all people to some degree and 2) as an important principle in literary theory. We must think of imagination not as a simple power but a complex series of processes, involving the impression-idea-relationship and memory. The data derived thus are still bound to their epistemological context, and only imagination provides the possibility to transcend the space-time-determination and the cause-effect-relationship, so that it allows a freer display of the sense-data.
This structural and functional analysis of imagination tries to show its immense importance in everyday-life as well as in literary production and reception.
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Literatur
Cf. S. T. Coleridge,Biographia Literaria, ed. by George Watson (London/New York 1971), EL 11, pp. 161–167 (Chap. XIII); cf. Jürgen Klein,Der Gotische Roman und die Ästhetik des Bösen (Darmstadt 1975), pp. 28–33. - I. A. Richards separates six different senses of the word “imagination”: cf. I. A. Richards,Principles of Literary Criticism (London 1970), pp. 188–199. Richards' second sense is concerned with imagination insofar as it is necessary in figurative language (metaphor or simile). He defines “metaphor” as “the supreme agent by which disparate and hitherto unconnected things are brought together in poetry for the sake of the effects upon attitude and impulse which spring from their collocation and from the combinations which the mind then establishes between them.” (I. A. Richards; op. cit., p. 189). Whereas Richards looks at the metaphor as a method to give “the wholeness of an experience”, 18th century philosophy held thatimagination should not be taken as a serious pendant tojudgment. For John Locke “wit” stands for the possibility of the mind to form metaphors, “judgment” however is the analytical faculty of the mind. Cf. John Locke,An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. by A. C. Fraser (New York 1959), vol. I, p. 203: “...Wit lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy;judgment on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully, one from another, ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude, and by affinity to take one thing for another.” The point is that Locke's empiricism, which stresses at the same time the analytical faculties of the mind, can only be understood by reference to the correspondence theory of truth. The analysis of the human understanding has the task to give insights into the borders of epistemological endeavours, because thus and only thus “misleading similitudes” can be avoided. For Locke “wit” therefore has only negative connotations, because it lacks every applicability to the world of experience and of human utilitarian procedures. It is obvious that the head of empiricist enlightenment in England would not have appreciated the “conceits” of the Metaphysical Poets (cf. Helen Gardner, “Introduction” to: H. Gardner (ed.),The Metaphysical Poets (Harmondsworth 1966), p. 19: “All comparisons discover likeness in things unlike.”) The positive evaluation of imagination started with Romanticism, though Laurence Sterne proved as an interesting precursor. Sterne was the first man of letters who understood that imagination is a faculty, which has the energy to create a world of its own. He therefore did not accept Locke's division between “wit” and “judgment”, but pleaded for their combination within creative writing. Cf. Laurence Sterne,The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, ed. by Graham Petrie (Harmondsworth 1972), pp. 202–211 (Book III, Chap. 20). This concept of combining wit and judgment anticipates the romantic theory of imagination, because it allows to consider imagination not only as a faculty of forming conceits or similes, but also as a faculty, which is able to construct literary worlds sui generis, — worlds, which cannot be totally reduced to ideas from our storehouse “memory”. And exactly this is Coleridge's starting point when he holds that the poet's creativity is an analogon to Gods' power of creation.
(Berkeley/Los Angeles 1978), University of California Press.
v. David Hume,A Treatise of Human Nature, intr. by A. D. Lindsay (London/New York 1964 and 1962), 2 vols.
cf. Immanuel Kant,Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ed. by Ramund Schmidt (Hamburg 1956), Philosophische Bibliothek 37a, B 150–B 152 (Transzendentale Deduktion der reinen Verstandes-begriffe, § 24).
Mary WarnockImagination (1978), p. 15.
v. Wolfgang Köhler,The Task of Gestalt Psychology” with an intr. by Carroll C. Pratt (Princeton N. J. 1973), Princeton University Press.
cf. Ludwig Wittgenstein,Tractatus logico-philosophicus (Frankfurt 1963), edition suhrkamp 12, p. 14 (2.021–2.022).
cf. S. J. Schmidt,Literaturwissenschaft als argumentierende Wissenschaft (München 1975), p. 189.
J. S. Petöfi in his “Textstruktur-Weltstruktur-Theorie” understands “world” primarily as a logical term. Consequently a literary text itself could be defined as a textual world. Cf. Elisabeth Gülich/Wolfgang Raible,Linguistische Textmodelle. Grundlagen und Möglichkeiten (München 1977), pp. 150–191.
cf. Elisabeth Gülich/Wolfgang Raible (1977), pp. 14–15.
cf. Jurij M. Lotman,Die Struktur des künstlerischen Textes (Frankfurt 1973), edition suhrkamp 582, pp. 22–23.
Cf. Mary Warnock (1978), p. 21.
Cf. Karl R. Popper, Logik der Forschung (Tübingen31969), p. 31: “Die Theorie ist das Netz, das wir auswerfen, um ‘die Welt’ einzufangen, — sie zu rationalisieren, zu erklären und zu beherrschen. Wir arbeiten daran, die Maschen des Netzes immer enger zu machen.”
not in the sense of the “Konsenstheorie der Wahrheit” (Habermas, Apel). Cf. L. Bruno Puntel,Wahrheitstheorien in der neueren Philosophie (Darmstadt 1978), Erträge der Forschung 83, pp. 144–164.
Cf. Russell's logical atomism. Cf. Antony Flew,A Dictionary of Philosophy (London 1979), p. 187.
“Einbildungskraft ist das Vermögen, einen Gegenstand auch ohne dessen Gegenwart in der Anschauung vorzustellen. Da nun alle unsere Anschauung sinnlich ist, so gehört die Einbildungskraft, der subjektiven Bedingung wegen, unter der sie allein den Verstandesbegriffen eine korrespondierende Anschauung geben kann, zur Sinnlichkeit; sofern aber doch ihre Synthesis eine Ausübung der Spontaneität ist, welche bestimmend, und nicht, wie der Sinn,/bloß bestimmbar ist, mithin a priori den Sinn seiner Form nach der Einheit der Apperzeption gemäß bestimmen kann, so ist die Einbildungskraft sofern ein Vermögen, die Sinnlichkeit a priori zu bestimmen, und ihre Synthesis der Anschauungen, den Kategorien gemäß, muß die transzendentale Synthesis der Einbildungskraft sein, welches eine Wirkung des Verstandes auf die Sinnlichkeit und die erste Anwendung desselben (zugleich der Grund aller übrigen) auf Gegenstände der uns möglichen Anschauung ist. Sie ist, als figürlich, von der intellektuellen Synthesis ohne alle Einbildungskraft bloß durch den Versand unterschieden. Sofern die Einbildungskraft nun Spontaneität ist, nenne ich sie auch bisweilen die produktive Einbildungskraft, und unterscheide sie dadurch von der reproduktiven, deren Synthesis lediglich nach empirischen Gesetzen, nämlich denen der Assoziation, unterworfen ist, und welche daher zur Erklärung der Möglichkeit der Erkenntnis a priori nichts beträgt, und um deswillen nicht in die Transzendentalphilosophie, sondern in die Psychologie gehört.” (Immanuel Kant,Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ed. cit., B 151/152).
Saul A. Kripke,Naming and Necessity (Oxford 1980), pp. 52–53.
op. cit., p. 48.
All historical experience which differs from “my individual history” can only be a construct. Cf. S. J. Schmidt,Grundriß der Empirischen Literaturwissenschaft, Band 1 (1980).
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Klein, J., Damm, V. & Giebeler, A. An outline of a theory of imagination. Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 14, 15–23 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01801172
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01801172