The Depth Dimension of Ricoeur’s Philosophy of Imagination

Abstract Implicit in Paul Ricoeur’s Lectures on Imagination is a depth dimension of the productive imagination that unfolds its sources that transfigure reality. The first part of the present essay introduces the problematic of the imagination to which Ricoeur seeks to respond: imagination has been viewed as derivative from perception or the concept and so is merely reproductive. Part two addresses how for Ricoeur the intertwining of experience and meaning allows an opening for the productive imagination to function. This subtext in the Lectures is extended by reference to Ricoeur’s greater exposition elsewhere on the symbolic mediation of action. Part three returns to the Lectures and its appraisal of productive imagination as the “nowhere” and seeks to develop what this nowhere as a point of origin might comprise. Part four draws upon Ricoeur’s work on the religious imagination to extend the nature of the productive imagination and its inspirations.