Heidegger's Early Philosophy by Luchte James;

Author:Luchte, James;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2019-11-22T16:00:00+00:00

Transcendental imagination as the third basic faculty

In order for transcendental imagination to be regarded as a faculty, Heidegger considers the phenomenological evidence for such a designation. A faculty, he contends, is a capacity, a ‘making possible of the essential structure of ontological transcendence’. It is not to be conceived, one of the points where Henrich agrees with Heidegger, as a ‘basic power’ in a soul. Such a notion betrays an ontic character, and not that of an a priori, ontological making-possible. Amid the re-configuration of finite knowledge, with the deconstruction of the unworlded stems of the theoretical back to an original clearing (Lichtung) of ‘world’, the ‘faculties’ are re-designated as indications of lived existence. Kant had stated that there are two stems or sources of ‘mind’, with perhaps a ‘common root’, and Heidegger points out that this binary division corresponds to the division into Aesthetic and Logic. Yet, in such a predicament, Heidegger laments, ‘The transcendental power of imagination is homeless.’308 Pure imagination, he argues, is not articulated in the transcendental aesthetic ‘where it properly belongs’ (although, I would point out that it is thematized in Kant’s criticisms of the notion of indictive imagination as a ‘framing out . . .’ of relations in Leibniz and Wolff). Indeed, Heidegger implies that there is an obvious confusion in the First Critique, most conspicuously manifest in Kant’s treatment of imagination in both editions of the Analytic. Not even asking the usual questions, one need only ponder Kant’s inability to clearly place the imagination, which Heidegger casts into relief.

In a significant way, and echoing Sallis’ Spacings,309 Kant’s problem, his confusion, is exposed in his deployment of the metaphors of ‘sources of-’ and ‘stems of’ knowledge as beams in the scaffolding for his architectonic. Kant’s reticence with respect to the implied root of the stems, or, of imagination as a source for knowledge, is broken open in the course of the A Edition and in unaltered sections of B, such as the Schematism, where he clearly continues to designate imagination as the third – as the root for ‘the stems’. Kant, in other places, describes concept and intuition as ‘sources of knowledge’ and designates, via Aristotle, imagination as a mediator, as a supervenient link, a bridge. Is it accidental or irrelevant that Kant uses this image to characterize sensibility and understanding, or is it instead used just to indicate that they grow from a ‘common root?’310 Does this conflict in metaphors, as Sallis argues, expose the almost undetectable links in texts which claim only to be governed by reason? Can we deploy the metaphor as a formal indication and see where it leads us in a phenomenological interpretation? It would seem that we do have this freedom, as long as we are transparent with respect to our hermeneutic method. Even disregarding the significance of metaphor, however, the problem of the homelessness of imagination, not only deserves scrutiny, but also suggests the possibility of imagination as an a priori ‘faculty’ of the soul.

Heidegger’s destrucktion finds

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.