Towards a Hermeneutic Epistemology of the Imagination: the Critical-Ontological Contribution of Paul Ricoeur

The paper analytically comments on Ricoeur’s remarks about imagination. Ricoeur was one of the first philosophers to underline Kant’s innovative role concerning imagination. According to Kant imagination has a creative function between the plane of reason (Verstand) and the plane of experience. But Kant’s reflection on imagination has a double value: in the Critic of pure reason Kant underlines the synthetic role of imagination for human knowledge, while in the third Critic he emphasises the role of imagination for artistic creativity. With reference to Husserl’s and Bachelard’s lessons, Ricoeur says that imagination has a fundamental function for the genesis of human thought. For this reason the paper shows how Ricoeur’s lesson on imagination, together with Einstein’s one, represents an import contribution to built a more sophisticated form of critical rationalism.