Imagining: A Phenomenological Study

by Edward S. Casey

Imagining
A Phenomenological Study
Second Edition
Edward S. Casey

A classic firsthand account of the lived character of imaginative experience.

"This scrupulous, lucid study is destined to become a touchstone for all future writings on imagination." ―Library Journal

"Casey's work is doubly valuable―for its major substantive contribution to our understanding of a significant mental activity, as well as for its exemplary presentation of the method of phenomenological analysis." ―Contemporary Psychology

". . . an important addition to phenomenological philosophy and to the humanities generally." ―Choice

". . . deliberately and consistently phenomenological, oriented throughout to the basically intentional character of experience and disciplined by the requirement of proceeding by way of concrete description. . . . [Imagining] is an exceptionally well-written work." ―International Philosophical Quarterly

Drawing on his own experiences of imagining, Edward S. Casey describes the essential forms that imagination assumes in everyday life. In a detailed analysis of the fundamental features of all imaginative experience, Casey shows imagining to be eidetically distinct from perceiving and defines it as a radically autonomous act, involving a characteristic freedom of mind. A new preface places Imagining within the context of current issues in philosophy and psychology.

[use one Casey bio for both Imagining and Remembering]
Edward S. Casey is Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is author of Getting Back into Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World (Indiana University Press) and The Fate of A Philosophical History.

Studies in Continental Thought―John Sallis, general editor

Contents
Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction The Problematic Place of Imagination
Part Preliminary Portrait
Examples and First Approximations
Imagining as Intentional
Part Two Detailed Descriptions
Spontaneity and Controlledness
Self-Containedness and Self-Evidence
Indeterminacy and Pure Possibility
Part Phenomenological Comparisons
Imagining and Continuities
Imagining and Discontinuities
Part The Autonomy of Imagining
The Nature of Imaginative Autonomy
The Significance of Imaginative Autonomy

Genres: Philosophy, Ebooks

272 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1976

About the author

Professor Edward Casey was the president of the American Philosophical Association (Eastern Division) from 2009-10, and he was chairman of the Philosophy Department at Stony Brook University for a decade. He works in aesthetics, philosophy of space and time, ethics, perception, and psychoanalytic theory. He obtained his doctorate at Northwestern University in 1967 and has taught at Yale University, the University of California at Santa Barbara, The New School for Social Research, Emory University, and several other institutions. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University.

His recent research includes investigations into place and space; landscape painting and maps as modes of representation; ethics and the other; feeling and emotion; philosophy of perception (with special attention to the role of the glance); the nature of edges.

Reviews

[MuzWot MuzWot · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my top 5 underappreciated, scandalously and immensely neglected - crucial classic works of all time.

[Jerome · Rating 3 out of 5]

Casey is best known for his phenomenological reflections on space vs. place. But in this work he addresses the widely differing views that philosophers have given to imagination and its powers. The book is broken down between historical survey, phenomenological analysis, and a "comparison" of imagining with similar mental acts.