Imagination is one of the least developed themes in the works of Paul Ricoeur. In the midst of his extensively productive intellectual output, one essay that treats significantly the theme is incorporated in one major publication consisting of collection of his essays on Hermeneutics. Adding to this burden of insignificance, the concept of imagination is held in suspect as unworthy of serious thought dues to its prejudicial connection with its colloquial understanding associated with daydreaming understood as unproductive, wasteful cerebral manipulation. Where in fact, imagination is creative and productive as claimed by Paul Ricoeur.
Imagination is a dimension of language[i] more intensively of the literary types. Ricoeur sees in the language’s imaginative capacity the power to mediate subjectivity for it is in the nature of language as discourse to constitute reality through its dynamic function of reference. Also, basic in Ricoeur’s thought is the understanding that subjectivity can neither claim nor aspire to be the ultimate foundation of reality nor fully constitute itself. Ricoeur rejects all hubris on the part of the subject for by itself, solipsistically alone and in soliloquy it is found wanting. Instead, the subject has to redeem itself among the expressions of the world and of itself. In Ricoeur’s words, “there is no self-understanding that is not mediated by signs, symbols and texts; in the last resort understanding coincides with the interpretation given to these mediating signs.”[ii] Hence, through the hermeneutic task, recovery of the self happens.
This paper then will describe the imaginative dimension of language which posses the key towards a renewed and reinvigorated philosophy of subjectivity. Also, this paper will elucidate how hermeneutics as a thought pattern and method is best suited to assist the recovery of the self. In sum, this paper will show how the twin hermeneutical themes of imagination and interpretation assist Ricoeur’s project of reviving subjectivity.
In order to give a satisfactory presentation of its findings, this paper will indicate the direction taken by Ricoeur’s thought an outline of
Chapter one will trace an outline Ricoeur’s thought to such an extent that will enable us to trace the line of direction of this thought, as he himself indicated, a hermeneutic phenomenology. Here we will describe the main features of his philosophy, as identified by his commentators, his major preoccupation and his philosophical method. This will serve as the context in which we will elaborate our particular hermeneutic and anthropological concerns.
Imagination as a trait of language
Imagination operates in symbol
imagination operates in dreams
imagination operates in poetics (metaphor)
imaginations operates in narative
[i] Mark Muldoon,
[ii] Paul Ricoeur, From Text to Action, Essays in Hermeneutics, II, trans. By Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson (Evanston, Ellinois: Northwestern University Press, 1991), p. 15.
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