Inventions of the imagination : Romanticism and beyond / edited by Richard T. Gray ... [and others].

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Gray, Richard T.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Imagination (Philosophy)--History.

Imagination (Philosophy).

History.

Physical Description:

194 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Seattle : University of Washington Press, [2011]

Summary:

The Dialectic Between Reason and Imagination forms a key element in Romantic and post-Romantic philosophy, science, literature, and art. Inventions of the Imagination, Romanticism and Beyond explores the diverse theories and assessments of this dialectic in a collection of essays by philosophers and literary and cultural critics.

By the end of the eighteenth century, an insistence on reason as the predominant human faculty had run its course, and the imagination began to emerge as another force whose contributions to human intellectual existence and productivity had to be newly calculated and constantly recalibrated. The attempt to establish a universal form of reason alongside a plurality of imaginative capacities describes the ideological program of modernism from the end of the eighteenth century to the present day. Are these two drives actually compatible with one another? Can a universal and monolithic form of reason tolerate the play, flexibility, and unpredictability of imaginative creativity? This collection chronicles some of the vicissitudes in the conceptualization and evaluation of the imagination across time and in a variety of intellectual disciplines, including philosophy, aesthetic theory, and literary studies.

These essays analyze the work of a range of predominately German and British philosophers and poets, including Kant, Hegel, Schiller, Blake, Keats, and Goethe. Together they create a rich and nuanced dialogue on the roles literature, fictions, and works of art in general-understood as products of the imagination-play for and in philosophical systems. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Imagination on the Move / Wolfgang Welsch Welsch, Wolfgang 17

2 The Poetics of Nature: Literature and Constructive Imagination in the History of Geology / Georg Braungart Braungart, Georg 26

3 Between Imagination and Reason: Kant and Spinoza on Fictions / Beth Lord Lord, Beth 36

4 Herder on Interpretation and Imagination / Mich'el N. Forster Forster, Mich'el N. 54

5 William Blake: Imagination, Vision, Inspiration, Intellect / Hazard Adams Adams, Hazard 68

6 Imaginative Power as Prerequisite for an 'esthetics of Freedom in Friedrich Schiller's Works / Wilhelm Voβkamp Voβkamp, Wilhelm 77

7 The Gentle Force Over Pictures: Hegel's Philosophical Conception of the Imagination / Klaus Vieweg Vieweg, Klaus 87

8 The Status of Literature in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: on the Lives of Concepts / Robert B. Pippin Pippin, Robert B. 102

9 Difficult Freedom: Hegel's Symbolic art and Schelling's Historiography in the Ages of the World (1815) / Tilottama Rajan Rajan, Tilottama 121

10 From art to History: Schelling's Modern Mythology and the Coming Community / Richard Block Block, Richard 141

11 "To Impose is not to Discover": A Romantic-Modernist Continuity in Contradiction / Christoph Bode Bode, Christoph 159.

Notes:

"A Robert B. Heilman Book."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780295990996

0295990996

9780295990989

0295990988

OCLC:

682897075