Imaginatio Creatrix

Abstract

Every serious philosophical quest reaches sooner or later the fundamental question of the origin of the human world and man’s role in it. Philosophy since Descartes has adopted a framework of inquiry in which the factors and sources of the world’s origin are sought chiefly in the nature and role of human consciousness; recognition of the nature and role of consciousness seems to be the major accomplishment of modern philosophy. Two major and lasting contributions to this accomplishment, as well as two major treatments of the problem of the origin of the world, have been offered — by Kant in earlier times and by Husserl in our day. And yet both of them, in spite of the wealth of detailed analysis which they have left as a lasting heritage for philosophical scholarship, seem to have failed in the adequate formulation and treatment of this problem. I see the reason for their failure in their main assumptions, which seem to consist, firstly, in a tacit acceptance of the Cartesian conviction of the absolute sovereignty of logical reason over other dimensions of human functioning, which ranges in gradations of intelligibility from blind organic operations, impulses on the affective and sensory levels and the whole dynamic dimension of the “passions,” to the highest rational operations and the transcending élan of the spirit.