THE DISCOVERY OF THE IMAGINATION.

The article presents information on imagination. Philosophy could not avoid, however, an encounter with the other dimension of the radical imaginary, its psychical dimension, the radical imagination of the subject. Here, the occultation cannot be radical. It has been the occultation of the radical character of the imagination, the reduction of the latter to a secondary role, sometimes a perturbing and negative one, sometimes auxiliary and instrumental: the question has always been posed in terms of the role the imagination plays in the relation to a True/False, Beauty/Ugliness, Good/Bad posited as already given and determined elsewhere. What mattered, indeed, was to assure the theory - the view, or the constitution - of what is, of what must be done, of what is valid, in its necessity, in its very determinacy. The imagination is, however, in its essence rebellious against determinacy. To this extent, it most of the time will be simply scotomized, or relegated to "psychology," or "interpreted" and "explained" in terms of its products, using flagrantly superficial ideas such as "compensation" for some unsatisfied need or desire.