Imagination

Abstract

Even if edmund husserl never created such a research field as phenomenological aesthetics, a great number of his first generation students did. Why? Either they felt that Husserl was about to develop one, or they were tempted enough by the phenomenology of imagination he invented to apply it to aesthetics. It is therefore worthwhile coming back to Husserl’s understanding of the act of imagining as well as to his apprehension of images. Such an analysis is to be found very early in a 1904/1905 lecture course that he devoted to the relationships between (1) imagination as an act of imagining (Phantasie), (2) our consciousness of images (Bildbewusstsein), and (3) the act of remembering (Wiedererinnerung) (Husserl 1980).