Abstract
Two human mental activities, “imagination” and “reasoning,” are ordinarily conceived as contrastive. It is often said that reasoning is a constitutive factor of the social sciences, but not a necessary condition for arts, and imagination is a constitutive factor of arts, but not a necessary condition for the social sciences. The objects, events, and occurrences perceived and recognized are, however, “thought objects,” and “imagination of hypothetical sense presentations” is indispensable for completing them. Imagination is a constitutive factor not only for arts but also for the social sciences. Sociology could not recognize society without the “sociological imagination.”
This essay aims to explore the “sociological imagination” in comparison to the so-called “artistic imagination,” basing on Alfred Schutz’s ideas, especially his conception of multiple realities and his theory of relevance. This is, in turn, an attempt to explore constitutive aspects of social reality in the light of the “sociological imagination,” which would lead to a conception of an adequate sociological theory.
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Notes
- 1.
Hereafter, the term “social constructionism” is used in this broader sense.
- 2.
- 3.
As for the relation between typification and “phantasia,” see Butnaru’s excellent essay (Butnaru 2009).
- 4.
The postulate of logical consistency is formulated in two ways. This postulate in a broad sense is equivalent to the postulate of rationality and contains the postulates of relevance and of compatibility as well as the postulate of logical consistency in a narrow sense, which requires the system of ideal type to be in full compatibility only with the principles of formal logic in a narrow sense (cf., Nasu 2005, pp. 125–127).
- 5.
Therefore, with regard to a “theory of objects,” social constructionism depends not on the “correspondence theory,” but on the “congruence theory.” (cf., Garfinkel 1953)
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Nasu, H. (2014). Imagination and the Social Sciences. In: Barber, M., Dreher, J. (eds) The Interrelation of Phenomenology, Social Sciences and the Arts. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 69. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01390-9_5
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