Įnirtingas miegas : vaizduotė ir fenomenologija

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Antika; E. Husserlis; Fenomenologija; Filosofija; I. Kantas; J. P. Sartre; M. Heidegeris; Vaizduotė; Vaizduotė, filosofija, fenomenologija; Antiquity text; E. Husserl; I. Kant; Imagination; Imagination, philosophy, phenomenology; J. P. Sartre; M. Heideger; Phenomenology; Philosophy.

ENThis book analyzes the contradictory function of imagination, the philosophical inspiration of which can be noticed as early as in Antiquity texts. The hero of Plato’s dialogue, the visitor from Elea, identifies “two types of mimicry” when analyzing sophist activities. In one instance, the effort is to accurately repeat the original, retaining proportions of “length, width and depth”. However, at times, when reality is being mimicked, “truth is bid farewell” and relationships are contorted, so the created object would appear lovelier (Sophist 235d–236a). The contradiction between Plato’s two functions of imagination reveals the interaction of ambiguity – the movement from illusion towards insight or from distortion towards analogy. John Sallis claims one must begin with the eikon and phantasma dialectics from the Sophist, when wanting to grasp the meaning of imagination, whereby semblances seem like similarities, whereas imagination itself remains beyond reach. The illusion of eikasia is an ontological paradox – it is the same process of confusion by which it is impossible to distinguish pure being from non-being, by which we are unable to unambiguously diagnose truth or deceit and accurately draw the line between reality and unreality. Such a strict division that surpasses an act of “mixing” by the same provides an opportunity to become involved in the process of the contemplation of change. Its meaning first appears in the thoughts of Anaximander. As per the apeiron principle, the act of cosmological creation is constantly in a stage of genesis – it is as if birth and disappearance were pulsating by some certain frequency into which existence and virtuality merge. Therefore the phenomenology of imagination proposed in this deliberation first attempts to bracket the old discriminatory stipulation by which imagination is understood to be the opposite of reality or its perception.An investigation of imagination encourages turning back to the experience of the genesis of the paradox, the puzzle, the impossibility. The famous phrase by Naom Chomsky, “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” — which is a grammatically correct but logically nonsensical statement — serves such a viewpoint as a certain primordial impulse of thought providing an opportunity to ask about the limits of imagination. Although it is impossible to come across anything that corresponds to the aforementioned sentence in the empirical world, this making of an oxymoron can press forth towards recourses of productive experience within the realm of imagination. The title of the book – Furious Sleep – can be understood as a directive towards the process of transformation containing an indestructible and fundamental ambivalence by which the independence of the consciousness reveals its spontaneous resistance. Symbolically Sartre names the heart of the problem regarding imagination in the last pages of his first work, L’Imagination: the outcomes of imagination are usually treated either as active synthesis (e.g., creating fiction) or as reproductive passivity coming from memory. However, amid these outcomes, there are many intermediary forms in existence, which we cannot define unambiguously in terms of their status and which we are nevertheless inclined to interpret by simplifying and reducing them (Sartre 2003: 158). Actually Sartre no longer continues his analysis on these “intermediary forms of imagination” in his next book but, in numerous instances, associates the creative power of imaginaire with activity of consciousness.Although imagination frequently tosses out its contents spontaneously – not correcting, not touching up, not ripening and not upbringing them – it is often released out of sight. Thus the visions, which have just appeared, do not formally assume a final shape, do not freeze into mental ice crystals and do not become finished substances but, by constantly evolving, they obey the most important rule for an imagination from a phenomenological viewpoint – the law of modification. That is why visions are not always as we had decided to see them. Spontaneity allows us to come face to face with the most interesting and most mysterious sphere of imagination – autonomy. Therefore “furious sleep” expresses a dualistic structure in which activity and concentration outcrops into passivity and commitment. In a phenomenological sense, what is being discussed here are about actively passive syntheses, about conscious actions whereby willful intentionality correlates with a stream springing out of control. Since such an act is controversial itself – as if it were being directed into opposite directions at the same time – it can be said that the ambivalent nature of imagination allows associating with the multiplicity of opposites. Identities disappear within an imagination; however, a flow of consciousness acquires a resonant and rhythmic order, which adheres to what could be called a specific regime of reality. When reality is complicated, fluctuating and ambiguous, there may be instances, when visionary openness grasps it more readily than a logocentric and rational deliberation. That is why it is possible that imagination can become not only a flight away from the experienced world but also an altered experience of the world itself. [Text from author]