Seeing More: Kant’s Theory of Imagination

Samantha Matherne defends a systematic interpretation of the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s theory of imagination. To this end, she offers an account of what kind of mental capacity Kant takes imagination to be in general, as well as an account of the way in which we use this capacity in theoretical, aesthetic, and practical contexts. In contrast with more traditional theories of imagination, as a kind of fantasy that we exercise only in relation to objects that are not real or not present, Matherne argues that Kant theorizes imagination as something that we exercise just as much in relation to objects that are real and present. Thus she attributes to Kant a view of imagining as something that pervades our lives. In order to bring out this pervasiveness, Matherne explores Kant’s account of how we exercise our imagination in perception, ordinary experience, the appreciation of beauty and sublimity, the production of art, the pursuit of happiness, and the pursuit of morality. However, she also argues that Kant’s analysis of this wide range of phenomena is underwritten by a unified theory of what imagination is, as a remarkably flexible cognitive capacity that we can exercise in constrained and creative, playful and serious ways.

Samantha Matherne, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University

Samantha Matherne is the Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of Humanities in the Philosophy Department at Harvard University. She is the author of Cassirer for the Routledge Philosophers Series and one of the authors of The Geography of Taste, along with Dominic McIver Lopes, Mohan Matthen, and Bence Nanay (OUP 2024). She is the editor of the first English translation of the work of the German philosopher, Edith Landmann-Kalischer: Edith Landmann-Kalischer: Essays on Art, Aesthetics, and Value, translated by Daniel Dahlstrom (in Oxford’s New History of Philosophy Series, 2023). She has also published articles on Immanuel Kant, Post-Kantian traditions, and Aesthetics.