Nicholas Rescher surveys and analyzes the different kinds of unreal possibilities and nonexistent objects, tying together all the diverse ways in which this area has been approached by philosophers. As he surveys the field and clarifies the kinds of unreality, he also makes a sustained argument against the philosophical fashion for dealing with nonexistent possible world as though they were authentic objects. The author holds that, while we may discuss possibilities, we ought not to accord them ontological status. The possibility of existence of a certain sort of world is not the existence of possible world of a certain sort. While we may reasonable discuss possibilities at the generic level, such as a world where dogs have horns, this does not require a commitment to a possible world where they do. The work that theorists of logic and language want to accomplish with possible worlds and individuals can be managed with propositional manifolds, stories or scenarios, while the modalities of necessity and possibility that modal logicians want to analyze in terms of realization in possible worlds can be handled by turning instead to figuring in stories or scenarios.

Perhaps the most important histiographic innovation of the twentieth century was the application of the historical method to wider and more expansive areas of the past. Where historians once defined the study of history strictly in terms of politics and the actions and decisions of Great Men, historians today are just as likely to inquire into a much wider domain of the past, from the lives of families and peasants, to more abstract realms such as the history of mentalities and emotions. Historians have applied their method to a wider variety of subjects; regardless of the topic, historians ask questions, seek evidence, draw inferences from that evidence, create representations, and subject these representations to the scrutiny of other historians. This book severs the historical method from the past altogether by applying that method to a domain outside of the past. The goal of this book is to apply history-as-method to the study of the future, a subject matter domain that most historians have traditionally and vigorously avoided. Historians have traditionally rejected the idea that we can use the study of history to think about the future. The book reexamines this long held belief, and argues that the historical method is an excellent way to think about and represent the future. At the same time, the book asserts that futurists should not view the future as a scientist might--aiming for predictions and certainties--but rather should view the future in the same way that an historian views the past.

Richard Kearney has produced a new and revised paperback edition of his classic book Poetics of Imagining. This volume offers an accessible account of the major theories of imagination in modern European thought. It analyses and assesses the decisive contributions made to our understanding of the imaginary life of phenomenology (Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard), hermeuneutics (Heidegger, Ricoeur) and post-modernism (Vattimo, Kristeva, Lyotard). Richard Kearney achieves this with a coherent and committed approach which displays his own passionate concern for the claims of imagination in our post-modern world of fragmentation and fracture.

Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. The fourteen original essays in this volume focus on the phenomenological and existentialist writings of the first major phase of his published career, arguing with scholarly precision for their continuing importance to philosophical debate. Aspects of Sartre’s philosophy under discussion in this volume include: consciousness and self-consciousness imagination and aesthetic experience emotions and other feelings embodiment selfhood and the Other freedom, bad faith, and authenticity literary fiction as philosophical writing Reading Sartre: on Phenomenology and Existentialism is an indispensable resource for understanding the nature and importance of Sartre’s philosophy. It is essential reading for students of phenomenology, existentialism, ethics, or aesthetics, and for anyone interested in the roots of contemporary thought in twentieth century philosophy.

How has the concept of productive imagination been developed in post-Kantian philosophy? This important and innovative volume explores this question, with particular focus on hermeneutics, phenomenology and neo-Kantianism. The essays in this collection demonstrate that imagination is productive not only because it fabricates non-existent objects, but also because it shapes human experience and co-determines the meaning of the experienced world. The authors show how imagination forms experience at the kinaesthetic, pre-linguistic, poetic, historical, artistic, social and political levels. The volume offers both a thematic and a historical overview of productive imagination understood as Kant originally wanted us to understand it.

Imagination and Postmodernity addresses the role of the imagination in philosophy today. By focusing on philosophy at the boundary of reason with constant reference to Kant’s view of the boundary-limit, it is possible to advance a viable alternative to deconstructing the imagination. Patrick L. Bourgeois puts forth the claim that by refocusing the imagination in the postmodern conversation, a far-reaching contemporary position can be reached that reestablishes the position of the humanities as central against the anti-humanism of deconstruction. This work addresses some of the challenges and problems that emerge in conflicting positions within contemporary philosophy, including a concentration on the role of the imagination in the work of Paul Ricoeur in contrast and in opposition to its role in such postmodern thinkers as Derrida and Lyotard. This treatment requires going back to the role of the imagination in the period of Kant and his immediate followers in order to clarify the various ways of seeing the imagination then and now, for the role today is anticipated in the nineteenth century. Finally, this work, as a creative appropriation of the position of Paul Ricoeur, presents a role for the imagination today that is more encompassing than most thinkers allow for.

The third edition of the acclaimed Routledge Companion to Aesthetics contains over sixty chapters written by leading international scholars covering all aspects of aesthetics. This companion opens with an historical overview of aesthetics including entries on Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Adorno, Benjamin, Foucault, Goodman, and Wollheim. The second part covers the central concepts and theories of aesthetics, including the definitions of art, taste, the value of art, beauty, imagination, fiction, narrative, metaphor and pictorial representation. Part three is devoted to issues and challenges in aesthetics, including art and ethics, art and religion, creativity, environmental aesthetics and feminist aesthetics. The final part addresses the individual arts, including music, photography, film, videogames, literature, theater, dance, architecture and design. With ten new entries, and revisions and updated suggestions for further reading throughout, The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics is essential for anyone interested in aesthetics, art, literature, and visual studies.