Monde Bleu

“Kant divides the imagination into the empirical (or reproductive) imagination and the productive imagination. In the reproductive imagination receptivity is, so to speak, dominant. Here, the having of an image is predominantly a matter of letting itself be given an image. It is a matter of the imagination letting itself be carried along by the syntheses (i.e., connections) as association offers them. In the productive imagination, on the other hand, spontaneity is what guides matters. And the synthesis speciosa, as it functions in the schematism, belongs to the productive imagination. Sensibilization as enacted by the imagination must be kept strictly separate from sensible intuition itself. In phenomenological terms, the distinction emerges still more sharply when we contrast the phenomenal character of the corresponding objects of the imagination and of sensible, empirical intuition respectively. The indeterminate object of an empirical intuition is what Kant calls “appearance.” Intuition is empirical insofar as it relates to its object by way of sensation (B 34).”—Heidegger