상상력의 인식기능 : 온전한 앎과 관련한 하나의 현상학적 시각

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to suggest an exemplary phenomenological understanding on the cognitive functions of imagination in terms of the holistic and integrated knowing. For more than hundreds of years, the dominant tendency of western philosophers influenced on the understanding of the mass of people in that the scientific positivism neglecting and belittling the cognitive functions of imagination. The overruling theories and practices of school based on the reasoning, logico-rational thinking, are well elucidating the preponderant knowledge. We have to rectify this distorted tendency of the knowing and revitalize the well-balanced understanding about the knowing and thinking. In a phenomenological perspective on the imagination in our thinking or knowing, we can find some basic and fundamental cognitive features of functions of the imagination ; contrasting to the logico-centric thinking, imagination have some characteristics including the spontaneous, insightful, intuitive, creative, and integrating functions of our knowing and thinking. We need not agree with Anatole France that “to know is nothing at all ; to imagine is everything”. But we do need to acknowledge the amplitude and intrinsic power of imagining and to recognize it as an autonomous, fundamental and integrating act of knowing that is comprehensible and significant in its own right. The works of forerunners like Sartre, Vygotsky, Casey, and Warnok show us the available studies on the phenomenological or the approximated approaches to the features and some cognitive functions of imagination. We need not to duplicate their opinions. But I think that we have to deepern and strengthen the existential and phenomenological vision on the imagination for the balanced and healthful understanding about knowing and thinking, especially in schooling and theories of arts in our society today.