Lectures on Imagination
Paul Ricoeur author George H Taylor editor Robert D Sweeney editor Jean-Luc Amalric editor Patrick F Crosby editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:The University of Chicago Press
Published:22nd Mar '24
Should be back in stock very soon
Ricoeur’s theory of productive imagination in previously unpublished lectures.
The eminent philosopher Paul Ricoeur was devoted to the imagination. These previously unpublished lectures offer Ricoeur’s most significant and sustained reflections on creativity as he builds a new theory of imagination through close examination, moving from Aristotle, Pascal, Spinoza, Hume, and Kant to Ryle, Price, Wittgenstein, Husserl, and Sartre. These thinkers, he contends, underestimate humanity’s creative capacity. While the Western tradition generally views imagination as derived from the reproductive example of the image, Ricoeur develops a theory about the mind’s power to produce new realities. Modeled most clearly in fiction, this productive imagination, Ricoeur argues, is available across conceptual domains. His theory provocatively suggests that we are not constrained by existing political, social, and scientific structures. Rather, our imaginations have the power to break through our conceptual horizons and remake the world.
"By its depth and the breadth of the path traveled, [Lectures on Imagination] stands out as nothing less than a centerpiece of the corpus." * Le Monde des Livres | on the French edition *
“This publication is of tremendous importance not only because of the centrality of the theme in Ricoeur’s oeuvre, but also because of the contribution that it makes to phenomenology, hermeneutics, post-Kantian European philosophy and philosophy of imagination. While imagination was a marginal theme in philosophy when Ricoeur delivered his lectures, today it has moved to the very center of intellectual discussions. The lectures include plenty of thought-provoking reflections that will continue to inspire thinkers writing on imagination, both in philosophy and beyond.” * Review of Metaphysics *
“This volume is an essential text for anyone interested in understanding how the human imagination works. With this careful translation, the editors have given us a necessary piece of Ricoeur's towering contributions to the Western understanding of the creative imagination.” -- John Arthos Jr., Indiana University
“This eagerly awaited book invites the reader on a fascinating dive into the depths of human imagination. Tracing a philosophical history from Aristotle and Kant to Husserl and Wittgenstein, Ricoeur offers a unique take on the metaphorical power of fiction in poetry and painting. An indispensable book for anyone interested in the sheer pleasure of invention.” -- Richard Kearney, Boston College
“This articulately edited series of lectures reveals key insights into the fruitfulness of Ricoeur’s wide-ranging engagement with different intellectual traditions, including phenomenology, analytic philosophy, linguistics, and poetics.” -- Roger W. H. Savage, University California–Los Angeles
ISBN: 9780226820538
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 30mm
Weight: 739g
400 pages