Imagination And The Rise Of Modern Western Aesthetics

Imagination is not just an ordinary concept about the psychological mechanism of human beings.More importantly,it has profound academic value and great significance to the academic history.From the ancient Greece,in the great influence of “Beauty is in Proportion” and the “Idea” theory of Plato,the status of imagination had not been recognized in both the cognitive activities and artistic creation.And imagination as the creative power of artists had been ignored in the dominance of Mimesis theory for long.Western people had taken imagination as a low-grade cognitive ability,fancy and false illusion for a long time.The status of imagination did not greatly change until the Modern Times.The rapid rise of imagination in the modern western philosophy and aesthetics is a remarkable event.It signifies the rise of modern western aesthetics,and it also constitutes an important dimension in modern western philosophy,and becomes an integral part of the modern knowledge systems.The self-consciousness of individuals and the development of subject consciousness resulted in the increasing attention to imagination since the Modern Times.As both the Empiricists and the rationalists attached great importance to imagination,imagination played a more and more important role in the cognitive and aesthetic activities.In the theories of transcendental deduction and transcendental schema,Kant elaborated on the pivotal role of imagination in the formation of knowledge.The transcendental imagination is crucial in “the Copernican Revolution in philosophy”.And in aesthetic activities,imagination is also a demonstration of both creative power and freedom of subject.In the Romanticism(especially the German Romanticism)and the Classical German Philosophy,the autonomy of art,the freedom and creativity of subject have been emphasized by the integration of imagination and the theory of organism,which has exerted an extensive and far-reaching influence.Therefore,imagination has become an organic part in aesthetic modernity as well as taken a part in the constitution of modern aesthetics.And it has also taken the role to criticize problems and malaises of modern society and the enlightenment modernity.Modern western aesthetics resorts to reality,and refers to knowledge and behaviors of modern people.And imagination in the modern aesthetics leads to aesthetic redemption.The fact that imagination is both an issue of aesthetics and that of modernity is the key characteristic of the modern aesthetics.Time and space provide us two dependable perspectives.In the history of modern western paintings,the establishment and extension of perspective,as well as the breakthrough from it,is the demonstration of the changes in artists' space consciousness and imagination.To some extent,modern living space,artistic space,and even the public space in the modern sense,are the consequences of imagination.In another sense,imagination is a bridge to connect the limited one and the eternal.The romanticism built up the transcending poetic space by the power of imagination.Moreover,time is another important field for modern people to perceive the new era.The Modern Era itself is the change and alteration in time.And imagination gives the modern time multiple dimensions to lead people to get over unpleasant reality and dilemmas in life.By imagination,modern people's perception of time helps people get rid of the linear mode of physical time,and also helps people overcome the pursuit of production efficiency that deprives people of their naturally free time.And by means of nostalgia,holding and experiencing the present time,imagination constructs multiple forms of time for people to break away from the ruthless control of time,and from shackles of modern society.After the wake of subject in the Modern Times,on the one hand,people established an understandable and even a controllable modern world by reason;and on the other hand,people established another mental world to live beyond the real world.And it undoubtedly resulted in the aesthetic modernity and utopia,which opened up the precious spiritual world beyond.The logic of argument of this paper is as follows: firstly,this paper begins with the studies in meanings of the concept of “imagination” in the ancient Greece and the relevant etymological researches,to explore the change and development of the concept of “imagination” from the Classical Age to the Modern Times.This first step of the research will provide a solid base of conceptual and academic history for the whole studies.Secondly,on the basis of the first step,this paper will elaborate on how imagination has constructed the time and space in modern arts and aesthetics respectively.People in Modern Times constructed time and space with imagination,which gives modern arts with unique styles,and promotes the development of modern aesthetics.Thirdly,this paper will explore the relationship between imagination and the rise of modern western aesthetics in the historical contexts.By exploring the alterations and situations of imagination in the postmodern society,and also by exploring the development of imagination from the modernism to the post modernism,this paper will analyze in the broader horizon the crises,challenges and opportunities that “imagination” is faced with in the contemporary academic context and artistic atmosphere.