- Inter-faculty Studies in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
- Bachelor's degree, first cycle programme, Computer Science
- Bachelor's degree, first cycle programme, Mathematics
- Master's degree, second cycle programme, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
- Master's degree, second cycle programme, Computer Science
- Master's degree, second cycle programme, Mathematics
(in Polish) Phenomenology of Imagination 3800-PI21-M-OG
What is imagination? What is its place in the general architecture of the human mind? Is it secondary and derivative in relation to other cognitive powers of human mind (especially perception, memory and thought)? Or is it autonomous and granted with its own kind of truth? Does it play any positive role in constituting our sense of reality and of ourselves? Or rather it puts us in the realm of the unreal, fictional, phantasmatic? Are these two realms radically opposed and separated or they permeate each other? Can imagination – as it was often underscored – be reduced to the power of re-/producing images? And if so, what is the status of images? Are they sensory, in character, derivatives of our previous perceptions? Or at best their (still sensory) creative combinations? These questions, among many others, recurs in philosophical tradition since, at least, Plato. But they achieved a special meaning and importance in phenomenology. For phenomenology, from its very beginning, has considered the problematic of imagination as one of its leading themes. On the one hand, because of its neutralizing capacity, it has been granted a very special methodological status, that of a “royal road” to essential truths (Husserl). On the other hand, when analyzed for its own sake, it was seen either as a great irrealizing/nihilating function of consciousness being at the same time the most fundamental condition of human freedom and ambivalent, to say the least, ethical disposition (Sartre), or as an essential (and not derivative) and creative constituent of all forms of human experience including perceptual and cognitive ones (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Casey). Furthermore, as having bodily-affective character (Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Wilshire, psychoanalysis) it plays at least three fundamental roles. First, it projects an existential space, a space in which we live, act, and inter-act with the other people. Second, it is inscribed into the human body directedness toward “imminent visibility”, toward indirect givens and hidden dimensions of reality, toward possibilities inscribed into reality. Third, it works as a projection which grants other people and our environment an affective aura, and in this way reveals them as significant and value-laden. The aim of the lecture is to provide an outline of a phenomenology of imagination which, informed and supported by psychoanalytical insights, will give justice to its polyphonic nature, significant methodological status, and different roles it plays in human experience of themselves, of the other people, and of the world. The special accent will be put on its: projective function, bodily-affective character, and ethical (in the broad sense of the word) dimension.
Type of course
general courses
Prerequisites (description)
Learning outcomes
Student:
- review and enrich vocabulary and linguistic skills in English (on level C1);
- have orderly and detailed knowledge about different roles imagination plays in human life and in culture;
- knows and understands different methods and argumentative strategies used in phenomenology;
- have basic knowledge about the main directions of development and new achievements in the field of philosophy.
After the course student can:
- read and interpret philosophical text;
- correctly used acquired philosophical vocabulary;
- analyze philosophical arguments, identify their crucial theses and premises and reveal the interrelations between them.
After the course student is:
- open to new ideas and ready to change his/her opinion in the light of available data and arguments;
- shows motivation to active participation in social life.
Assessment criteria
The final grade will be based on: a written essay and active participation in discussions during the course.
In both cases assessed will be: the ability to understand and solve a given philosophical problem by using defensible arguments; using correctly the acquired terminology; using the most appropriate argumentative strategy for a given philosophical problem; argumentative and narrative clarity of a written essay; convincing and adequate responding to a critique.
Acceptable number of absences: 2
Bibliography
Mary Warnock,”Imagination”
Edward S. Casey, „Imagining: A Phenomenological Study”
Edward S. Casey, „Imagining and Remembering”
Richard Kearney, „Poetics of Imagining: Modern and Postmodern”
Paul Crowther, „Imagination, Language and the Perceptual World: A Post-Analytic Phenomenology”
Jean-Paul Sartre, „Imagination”
Jean-Paul Sartre, „The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination”
Bruce Wilshire, “The Role Playing and Identity: The Limits of Theatre as Metaphor”
Riccardo Steiner (ed.), „Unconscious Phantasy”
Additional information
Information on level of this course, year of study and semester when the course unit is delivered, types and amount of class hours - can be found in course structure diagrams of apropriate study programmes. This course is related to the following study programmes:
- Inter-faculty Studies in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
- Bachelor's degree, first cycle programme, Computer Science
- Bachelor's degree, first cycle programme, Mathematics
- Master's degree, second cycle programme, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
- Master's degree, second cycle programme, Computer Science
- Master's degree, second cycle programme, Mathematics
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: