Imaginatio Creatrix

Abstract

Every serious philosophical quest reaches sooner or later the fundamental question of the origin of the human world and man’s role in it. Philosophy since Descartes adopts a framework of inquiry in which the factors and sources of the world’s origin are sought chiefly in the nature and role of human consciousness; the recognition of the nature and role of consciousness seems to be the major accomplishment and progress of modern philosophy over the past. The two major and lasting contributions to this effect, as well as the two major treatments of the problem of the origin of the world, have been offered, by Kant in modern times and by Husserl in the contemporary period. And yet, both of them, in spite of the wealth of detailed analysis which they have left as a lasting heritage for philosophical scholarship, seem to have failed in the adequate formulation and treatment of this problem. I see the reason for their failure in their main assumptions, which seem to consist, firstly, in a tacit acceptance of the Cartesian conviction about the absolute sovereignty of the logical reason over other dimensions of human functioning, which stretches in gradation of intelligibility from the blind organic operations, the impulses through the affective and sensory levels and the whole dynamic dimension of ‘passions’, to the highest rational operations and transcending-élan of the spirit.¹