紀要論文

紀要論文

text

Osaka Human Sciences. 2024, 10, p. 147-167

Position of Imagination in Hegel : Critique of the political economy of memory and imagination, Part III

Nojiri, Eiichi

Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University

英語

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2024-03

This article is the third (Part III) in a series of six to eight parts. Alloying philosophy, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies, this series seeks to articulate the relationship between the essential nature of Western philosophy’s metaphysical method of dialectics and the structure of memory in human beings. Covering Western philosophers from the ancient to modern periods, such as Plato, Socrates, Augustine, Descartes, Kant, Heidegger, Hegel, Lacan, Derrida, and Jakobson, and quoting social, cultural, and psychopathological materials such as Sarashina Diary (the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue in 11c Japan), Funes the Memorious (Jorge Luis Borges), Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami), 1984 (Apple Computer television commercial), autism spectrum disorder, late capitalism, and even the Quest Atlantis boom, this series endeavors to elucidate the nature of memory in the neurotypical (NT), or the so-called normal—the majority of human beings. It is only in comparison with the so-called abnormal that the so-called normal can be defined. As a conclusion, the author elucidates that it is the being of “the otherness” that always and already permeates the normal and stable functioning of memory, and it is that which frames the structure and content of the ego. In other words, this study depicts the heteronomous nature of the capability of memory and imagination of typical developed individuals.In Part I, I traced the position of the imagination from Augustine to Descartes, and in Part II, its position in Kant and Heidegger. In Part III, I will examine Hegel’s theory of the imagination with precision. Hegel locates the function of the imagination in the chapter “Psychology” in the “Philosophy of Spirit” in his Enzyklopädie. Hegel’s theory of imagination builds on Kant’s distinction between reproductive imagination and productive imagination,but Hegel transforms the productive imagination into an imagination that makes “sign.” In Hegel’s psychology, the function of representation follows the reception of sense data through intuition (Anschauung). The action of representation has three stages: recall (Erinnerung), imagination (Einbildungskraft), and memory (Gedächtnis). Imagination lies between recall and memory. The distinction between recall and memory is also unique to Hegel. In recall, the sensations received by intuition are made into images and stored in the “shaft” of the mind. Then, when the next intuition occurs, the stored images are called up and superimposed. This allows the human mind to receive the external world through images of its own. This is the beginning of intellectualization. Imagination, as the next higher stage, is the ability to call up images in an arbitrary manner, even in the absence of intuitive stimulation.Imagination furthermore functions as a productive imagination that produces “sign (Zeichen)” in the next stage. The position of this imagination is unique to Hegel. Sign is distinct from symbol. Symbols have sensory characteristics—their forms, which express their meanings— whereas signs are representations that have meanings independent of their sensory characteristics. Thus, to separate the sensible image from its individuality and subsume it inthe abstract and general meaning world is to become an intellectual mind for Hegel, and such a general system of meanings is what Hegel calls “memory.” Thus, memory has nothing to do with personal recollections. In Hegel’s view, imagination thus leads human to live in “memory” as a general intelligence.

10.18910/94833

94833

Position of Imagination in Hegel : Critique of the political economy of memory and imagination, Part III

Nojiri, Eiichi

Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University

英語

2024-03

Osaka Human Sciences

10

147

167

https://hdl.handle.net/11094/94833

10.18910/94833

https://doi.org/10.18910/94833