Imagination: Cross-Cultural Philosophical Analyses

233 Pages·2018·1.603 MB·English

by  Hans-Georg Moeller

Imagination
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Imagination
Cross-Cultural Philosophical Analyses
edited by
Hans-Georg Moeller and Andrew K. Whitehead
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First published in Great Britain 2019
Copyright © Hans-Georg Moeller and Andrew K. Whitehead, 2019
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Contents
Introduction Andrew K. Whitehead 1
Part 1 Imagination in Chinese and Japanese Philosophies 11
1 Truth and Imagination in China: Opposition and
Conciliation in the Tradition Richard John Lynn 13
2 Zhuangzi and Fantasy Literature Nicolas Le Jeune 29
3 Visual Zen: The Role of Imagination
in Shaping a Zen Aesthetics Rudi Capra 45
Part 2 Comparative Studies on Imagination 57
4 The Imaginary and the Real in Zhuangzi and Plato May Sim 59
5 Is There Imagination in Daoism? Kant, Heidegger, and
Classical Daoism: Rethinking Imagination and Thinking in
Images Steven Burik 79
6 Daoism, Utopian Imagination, and Its Discontents Ellen Y. Zhang 103
Part 3 Post-Comparative Conceptions of Imagination 127
7 Imagination beyond the Western Mind Julia Jansen 129
8 Time, Habit, and Imagination in Childhood Play Talia Welsh 141
9 Images of Me in the Roles I Live: An Existentialist Contribution
to Confucian Role Ethics Andrew K. Whitehead 153
10 Imagination, Formation, World, and Place: An Ontology
John W. M. Krummel 163
11 Imagination and the Lives of Others Victoria S. Harrison 187
12 Between Truth and Utopia: Philosophy in North America and the
Narrowing of the Social-Political Imagination Gabriel Soldatenko 203
Index 221

Introduction
Andrew K. Whitehead
The imagination has been a topic of fascination and examination throughout the
history of Western philosophy. From the writings of Plato and Aristotle, drawing
on the etymological links between idea (ιδέα from the Greek “to see” εἴδω) and
image (εικόν), and between fantasy (φαντασία) and appearance (“phainomenon”
φαινόμενο), through to contemporary scholarship in phenomenology, aesthetics,
philosophy of mind, and psychoanalysis, the imagination in its various senses
has consistently been afforded significance in how the world is encountered,
experienced, and conceived. The role of the imagination may be understood
negatively, as the capacity to depart from the real, or as deceptive and illusory,
and therefore as demanding correction or critique. It may also be understood
positively, as reproductive or even constructive, as an invaluable source for our
making present what is not itself present, and as necessary for the projection
of alternative scenarios and possible worlds. Despite this notable difference in
the many senses in which the imagination is understood, it is not clear that this
difference indicates a rigid distinction, as the negative and positive conceptions
of the imagination can also be understood as different aspects of one and the
same phenomenon. The ebb and flow of philosophical scholarship on the
imagination evidences the correlative emergence of divergences in perspective
and situated critique.
Turning to non-Western philosophy, although the idea of imagination as
the mental faculty of an individual mind makes less sense, we still encounter
comparable notions of imaginative engagement. Conceptions of the illusory and
deceptive, the development of fantastic narratives and metaphors, the relation
between projection and truth, and the use of images and allegories abound in
all schools. Even more relevant material is found in implicit engagements with
issues of the imagination, which do not necessarily make use of concepts and do
2 Imagination
not necessarily address questions commonly associated with the imagination in
Western discourses.
However, the imagination is of interest to comparative philosophy in
particular not only as a topic of investigation, but also as an indispensable means.
Comparative philosophy often takes place in a non-place, if you will, in an
imagined place where comparisons can take place. The imagination here acquires
a crucial methodological role, providing possibilities for intercultural and trans-
temporal dialogue and critical engagement. As comparative philosophers,
we do not simply analyze and examine, but we also imagine collectively, in a
social imaginary that we might come to call a post-comparative place, to the
extent that this imagined place focuses on method as opposed to disciplinary
affiliation, and to the extent that we imagine it to go beyond simple comparisons.
Over the last several decades, there seems to be an increasing tendency first to
co-opt the nomenclature of comparative philosophy, and then, in turn, to argue
for more refined and sophisticated nomenclature, such as “fusion philosophy,”
“contrastive philosophy,” and “synthesizing philosophy.” Here we find attempts
to draw out the legitimacy of non-Western philosophical schools of thought in
terms appropriate to “philosophy proper,” that is, to evidence their legitimacy
for inclusion in a canon of “philosophy simpliciter” by translating them into
the language of the existing (Western) canon. In this sense, such scholarship
embellishes upon boundaries and borders that it has itself erected, under the
(false) presupposition that the penultimate intention of such scholarship is to
eradicate these very same borders.
The following volume looks to move beyond precisely this “appropriating”
type of comparative philosophy. In other works, Hans-Georg Moeller1 has insisted
on a turn to post-comparative philosophy. My understanding of this turn is as
a response to a marked need to turn back to comparative philosophy as it was
initially conceived and practiced, as a call to an “imaginary” neutral territory for
the sake of allowing pluralism and its efforts to speak for themselves. As I see it, it
is also a liberating turn, a turn away from the distorting constraints produced by
the disciplinary tendencies of the neo-liberal university, such as an overzealous
preoccupation with “novel” analyses, “high-impact” and “groundbreaking”
research, and an unprecedented demand for research “output” in general.
Eduardo Galeano reminds us in the book Open Veins of Latin America that “in
an incarcerated society, free literature can exist only as denunciation and hope”
(1997: 13). I choose to paraphrase his sentiment and note that in an incarcerated
institution such as the neo-liberal university, free philosophy can exist only as
denunciation and hope. The denunciation of the collective imbecilization that
Introduction 3
has permeated our institutions of higher education for the last fifty years has
already begun, indicating a marked hope for an imagined alternative. There are
increasingly more venues where we are free to imagine such alternatives freely,
collectively, and critically. If Galeano (1997: 13) is correct in his existential
finding that “we are what we do, especially what we do to change what we are,”
then our commitment now, to imagine and enact a return to philosophy proper,
to a sustained and systematic articulation of how we are for the sake of drawing
us to how we should be, is what we are.
I find myself inspired by and resolutely empathetic with a story that Galeano
articulates in his Book of Embraces. He writes:
There was an old and solitary man who spent most of his time in bed. There were
rumors that he had a treasure hidden in his house. One day some thieves broke
in, they searched everywhere and found a chest in the cellar. They went off with
it and when they opened it they found that it was filled with letters. They were
the love letters the old man had received all over the course of his long life. The
thieves were going to burn the letters, but they talked it over and finally decided
to return them. One by one. One a week. Since then, every Monday at noon, the
old man would be waiting for the postman to appear. As soon as he saw him, the
old man would start running and the postman, who knew all about it, held the
letter in his hand. And even St. Peter could hear the beating of that heart, crazed
with joy at receiving a message from a woman. (1997: 10)
While tempted to identify with the old man, I believe our role and our function
are and need to be closer to that of the thieves and the postman. We must re-
appropriate what has been hidden away for the sake of re-distribution. We must
yoke the social affect that is to be so crazed with joy by instigating collective
hope. We must reinvigorate the social imaginaries. In so doing, we must
endeavor to take up legitimate comparative philosophical methods, free, as
much as possible, from the constraints imposed by current disciplinary orders
and from the analytic critiques which support and facilitate the imposition
of illegitimate terms of differentiation and reconciliation. We must endeavor
to practice comparative philosophy anew. This then is what can be meant by
post-comparative philosophy: comparative philosophy, free from the pomp and
presumption that has worked to undermine it in the name of something like
“global philosophy,” at least insofar as this suggests that distinct perspectives can
be amalgamated and their differences somehow dissolved. Insofar as I have a
pluralist understanding of comparative philosophy, I remain skeptical of such
tendencies. If comparative philosophy really is not only rigorous, but also “open,”
then it must remain receptive to objections and revisions. I believe this volume