Epistemic and Aesthetic Analysis of Imagination: Its Role in the Creation of Beauty in Art, Emphasis on Kāṣmīr Śaiva Siddhānta

Indian philosophers have concluded that imagination has two distinct categories - mere images borrowed from residual traces of ideas (of memory) and free images. At the time of art creation, intellect ceases to be active to juxtapose all the free images emerging from the consciousness. In the West, there are contrary theories among themselves like some empiricists deny the creative role of imagination in creating beauty in art and idealists distinguish the imagination into two categories one is creative or productive and another is reproductive and the former is free from residual traces or of any determinations. Though scholars have categorized imagination under the creative domain, mere free imagination cannot be the creative cause of the beauty in art. Then what is the role of imagination in creating beauty in art? Utpaladeva discussed the role of imagination in the reflection of self-realization explicitly in Īśvarapratyabhijnāvimarśini (IPV), by the analysis of these epistemic arguments, this paper aims to enhance the understanding of the self-reflective activity of the imagination in creating beauty in art and examines the singularity among the epistemic and aesthetic concept of imagination of the Kāṣmīr Śaivas.