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The Poetic Imagination in Heidegger and Schelling

Thesis advisor: John Sallis / This dissertation investigates the importance of the imagination in the thought of F.W. J. Schelling and Martin Heidegger, and argues that Heidegger's later philosophy cannot be understood properly without appreciating Schelling's central importance for him. It is increasingly recognized today that Schelling, who had long been overlooked, is an important figure in post-Kantian German Idealism. However, his significance for Heidegger's concentration on the creative character of thought remains undervalued. I argue that, by tracing the theme of imagination in these thinkers, the milieu of Schelling's absolute idealism and that of Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenlogy may be understood as distinct discourses that nevertheless share in a profound impulse to overcome sensible-intelligible and subject-object dualisms and retrieve and refine the productive and projective character of reason. This impulse is first evident in both thinkers' attention to the role of imagination in Kant's critical project (for Schelling, cir. 1800; for Heidegger, cir. 1929). It then proves inseparable from Schelling's treatments of intuition, identity, ground, and freedom; and it becomes still more evident in Heidegger's 1936 lecture course on Schelling and his affiliated inquiries into the essence of art and poetry. Even as Heidegger labors to deconstruct the alleged visual and subjectivist bias of metaphysics, he remains preoccupied with Schelling's ontological treatment of the law of identity and intent on translating Schelling's aesthetic emphasis into a poetic paradigm for philosophical inquiry. By focusing on how, alongside his engagement with Schelling, Heidegger endeavors to recover the imagination as a poetic (as opposed to reductive and willful) basis for reason, we attain a decisive rubric for understanding his later thought / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_101901
Date January 2011
CreatorsYates, Christopher S.
PublisherBoston College
Source SetsBoston College
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeText, thesis
Formatelectronic, application/pdf
RightsCopyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted.

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