afrikaimaginacion revisado

7/30/2019 afrikaimaginacion revisado

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PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF SOUTHERN AFRICA

2010 CONFERENCE PAPER

CANDESS KOSTOPOULOS

New adventures in thinking1: Paul Ricoeurs philosophy of imagination as a

stimulation of action towards liberation

1. Introduction

In the past few decades imagination, as a philosophical category or concept

denoting subjective agency and accountability, has increasingly become obscured in

Western thought (Anderson, 2001; Kearney, 1991). In the wake of this eclipse a

number of contemporary thinkers such as Gianni Vattimo, Julia Kristeva, and Jean-

Franois Lyotard have, to greater or lesser extents, attempted specifically post-

modern accounts of imagination (Kearney, 1991:170-209). Few contemporary

philosophers have, however, produced such a sustained and meticulous reflection on

imagination as did Paul Ricoeur; and it may even be argued that imagination forms

the ultimate agenda of his vast and seemingly divergent project (Kearney,

1991:135).

Paradoxically though, the concept of imagination remains, to a large extent,

under-researched in studies on Ricoeur; and most recent contributions to a

contemporary account of imagination subsequently fail to profit from his pivotal

research. In this paper I will, therefore, give a critical exposition of Ricoeurs

philosophy of imagination, in order to: (1) argue that imagination is the key concept

underpinning Ricoeurs philosophical viseof a liberating hermeneutics of praxis;

(2) and to point out how his philosophy of imagination can contribute towards a viable

contemporary account of imagination.

2. Three themes in Ricoeurs project

Paul Ricoeurs vast and divergent philosophical oeuvre, brought to a close by his

death in 2005, often conveys the impression, at first glance, of an enormous forest

one could readily get lost in (Jervolino, 1990:9). Yet, his project actually follows very

coherent lines of development, one of which is often singled out as thecentral theme

of his thought, namely: his philosophical anthropology (De Visscher, 2005:12;

Klemm, 1983:45; Madison, 1996:75). Although the destiny of the idea of subjectivity

1Ricoeur as quoted by Domenico Jervolino in The cogito and hermeneutics: the question of

the subject in Ricoeur, p. 134.


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is, by his own admission (Ricoeur, 1990:xi), the recurring problemaddressed by his

work, two other important features combine to produce the coherence of his work,

namely: methodand vision.

According to Ricoeur (1990:xi-xiii) these three themes together give

coherence to his thought; and when reflecting on the conceptual role played by

imagination in his philosophy, one must therefore continually keep in mind that

imagination is tied up with all three of the mentioned themes. It is, namely, an integral

part of what makes us human; central to Ricoeurs dialectic method of

phenomenological hermeneutics; and, most importantly, a fundamental condition of

his vision or vise, which he (1990:xi) describes as the elaboration of a

hermeneutics of human praxis within the horizon of a poetics of freedom.

One cannot, however, reflect on all three themes at once; and therefore I will

start from his philosophical method, since the various methodological shifts he affects

throughout his work are easily readable instances of deeper-lying conceptual

developments in his philosophy.

3. Imagination and Ricoeurs phenomenological hermeneutics

Ricoeur begins his own project with an attempt to reveal mans structures or

fundamental possibilities by means of a phenomenological reduction. Although he

dissociates his method, from the outset, from Husserls transcendental reduction, he

is nevertheless still concerned, at first, with the elucidation of essential meanings,

resulting from of a Wesensschauor direct and immediate understanding by means of

a phenomenological reduction.

The most immediate Wesensschau for Ricoeur is the revelation of the

human situation as the reciprocity of the involuntary and the voluntary (Ricoeur,

1966:4), where all that is involuntary lacks meaning apart from its relationship to

voluntary will. Although the centrality of the cogito, understood as the unifying

function of the voluntary will or the I will, is in marked contrast to Ricoeurs laterdisavowal of the philosophies of the cogito, the beginnings of his vision of selfhood

as open to the Other, and his subsequent turn away from a pure phenomenology is

already visible. Ricoeurs volitional reorientation of the Husserlian concept of

intentionality underscores volition as intention par excellence; and by reformulating

the cogitoin terms of an I can, thereby placing the intentionality of consciousness in

a context of what can and cannot be willed, Ricoeur opens the entire intentional

thrust of consciousness to that which is other-than-cogito.

Having opened consciousness up in this way, Ricoeur can introduce the so-

called mystery of existence into his thought, and emphasize the interpretive quality


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most of his semantic reorientation of imagination by introducing the idea of split-

reference. According to this principle, the neutralizing function of imagination with

regard to the real is but the negative condition for the release of a second-order

referential power (Ricoeur, 2007:174). What is abolished, according to Ricoeur

(2007:175), is only the reference of ordinary discourse applied to objects which

respond to our first-order interest in manipulation and control; this abolishment allows

a second-order referencein which our belonging to the life-world and our ontological

ties to other beings and to being is allowed to be said. A new reference-effect is

thus produced by the imaginations double valence with respect to reference,

namely the power of works of the imagination to re-describe reality (Ricoeur,

2007:175).

It is this power which also comes to figure prominently in the social

imagination, where the imaginative practices of ideology and utopia become the

primary instances of the imaginations figuringand its re-descriptionof the socio-

political landscape. These imaginative practises display a double ambiguity, one

arising from the polarity betweenthe two practices and one arising from the polarity

within each of them, which consist of the opposition between a positive and

constructive side to a negative and destructive side in each (Ricoeur, 2007:181).

Both polarities are structural features of the imaginative core which constitutes both

ideology and utopia before simply being obstacles to overcome.

According to Ricoeur (2007:182), ideology functions in a way similar to a

picture of a societal/political grouping, or as an instance of the reproductive

imagination; and its specific pathology is manifested in a reinforcement and repetition

of social ties in situations that are after-the-fact. Utopia functions in a way similar to

fiction, or as an instance of the productive imagination; and its specific pathology is

degeneration of viable imaginative variations of society into a mad dream following

the logic of schizophrenia. This means that the crisscrossing of utopia and ideology is

the result of two fundamental directions of the social imaginary; and that you cannothave one without the other, for even the most reduplicative ideology produces a gap

or distance for imaginative variation and even the most erratic form of utopia remains

a desperate effort to represent humanity as it fundamentally is. This is why, writes

Ricoeur (2007:186), the tension between utopia and ideology is insurmountable.

5. Concluding remarks

This, off course, brings us back to Ricoeurs philosophical vision. When he outlines

his vision as a hermeneutics of praxis, he admits that this vision addresses the

deepest-lying motivations of his work, namely its issuance in an ethical and political


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reflection capable of stimulating action towards liberation (Ricoeur, 1990:xiii). By

positing the seemingly disparate phenomena of ideology and utopia within in the

same conceptual framework, namely that of the social imagination, Ricoeur gives

imagination a fundamental place in his own understanding of politics and liberation. If

ideology and utopia are so intertwined that the tension between them cannot be

surmounted, liberation is, however, either impossible or only possible on the very

grounds of the relationship between these two instances of the social imaginary.

Ricoeur (2007:187) takes the second option when he says that we reach the

sphere of the social only through these two figures of false consciousness. We

take possession of the creative imagination, writes Ricoeur (2007:187), only in a

critical relation with these two figures of false consciousness; which means, in effect,

that ideology must be critiqued from the utopian vantage-point of nowhere whilst the

folly of utopia must be cured by the healthy integrative functions of ideology.

According to Ricoeur (1986:314) the reflective judgement, in the Kantian sense of the

word, of appropriateness or of what is fitting in a given situation is the only way to

solve to problems inherent in the social imagination. For although we cannot get out

of the circle of ideology and utopia, the judgement of appropriateness may help

transform this circle into a spiral.

Ricoeur is thus repeating, at the level of the political, some the initial

tensions he started with and which can be summarily referred to as tensions

resulting from variations between the extremes of complete domination of meaning

by consciousness and the domination of consciousness by meaning. In the same

way as the imaginative core of Ricoeurs methodology is revealed in the dialectic of

distanciation and belonging, so the imagination is again revealed as a meaning-

receiving meaning-creating linguistic activity which allows us to see as in the

dialectic of ideology and utopia. It is also a revealed as part and parcel of the so-

called judgement of appropriateness needed to transform a vicious circle into a

healthy spiral.Although his theory of imagination can contribute in various ways to a general

contemporary philosophy of imagination, the restricted scope of this paper only

allows us to highlight, which seems to me, his potentially most important contribution:

a concept of imagination with is divested of both idealist and romantic excess, but still

entails sufficient scope for subjective agency and responsibility. Whereas other

contemporary accounts of imagination have often struggled to rid imagination of the

connotation of false consciousness without either adopting a strict ontological

separation between the imaginary and the real or abolishing this distinction all

together, Ricoeur has succeeded in proving one possible, and to my mind, viable


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way in which the distinctiveness of the imaginary and the real can be preserved

without lapsing into either a dichotomy or a confusion. In this way, he has truly made

the seemingly outdated concept ofimagination available again for new adventures

of thinking.

References

ANDERSON, K.H.R. 2001. Imagination and ideology: ethical tensions in twentieth-

century French writing. InThe modern language review. Vol. 96, No. 1 (Jan.,

2001), pp. 47-60.

DE VISSCHER, J. 2005. Paul Ricoeur. In Achterhuis, H., De Visscher, J.,

Teppema, S. en Weiland, J.S. (Eds) Denkers van nu. Diemen: Uitgeverij

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JERVOLINO, D. 1990. The cogito and hermeneutics: the question of the subject in

Ricoeur. Translated from Italian by Gordon Poole. Contributions to

phenomenology. Volume 6. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

KEARNEY, R. 1991. Poetics of imagining: from Husserl to Lyotard. London: Harper

Collins Academic.

KLEMM, D. E. 1983. The hermeneutical theory of Paul Ricoeur: a constructive

analysis. Toronto: Bucknell University Press.

MADISON, G.B. 1996. Ricoeur and the hermeneutics of the subject. In L.E. Hahn

(Ed) The philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. The library of living philosophers.

Volume XXII. Peru: Open Court Trade and American Books.

MOHANTY, J.N. 1972. The concept of intentionality. St. Louis: Warren H. Green.

RICOEUR, P. 2007. Imagination in discourse and in action. From text to

action: essays in the hermeneutics of action, II. Translated from French by

Kathleen Blamey. Northwestern University studies in phenomenology and

existential philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.RICOEUR. P. 1991. The function of fiction in shaping reality. In M.J Valdes (ed). A

Ricoeur reader: reflection and imagination. Toronto: University of Toronto

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RICOEUR, P. 1986. Lectures on ideology and utopia. Edited and introduced by G.H.

Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press.

VENEMA, H.I. Identifying selfhood: imagination, narrative, and hermeneutics in the

thought of Paul Ricoeur. New York: State University of New York Press.

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