On Heidegger’s Ontological Interpretation Of Kant’s Theory Of Imagination

Heidegger’s thematic discussion on imagination was in his early ontological interpretation of Kant’s the Critique of Pure Reason, his view was his foundational ontology. From this view, Kant’s the Critique of Pure Reason was seen as a laying of the ground for metaphysic, i.e. how is ontology possible. In his view, the center of the laying in Kant was the question on the possibility of a priori synthetic judgments. In his reading, Kant’s problem of a priori synthesis, he called ontological synthesis (ontological knowledge), was another expression of his question about the comprehension of Being. By Kant’s text, the basic content of Heidegger’s theory of imagination was to elucidate the essence of the inner possibility of ontological knowledge, to reveal the essence of the imagination which makes this knowledge coming-to-pass. In the process of interpretation, we should bear in mind that to ask the inner possibility of ontological knowledge is also an inquiry on the essence of human being’s finite transcendence, because the former is the occurrence of the last.In a word, Heidegger, on the basis of the problem of human being’s finite transcendence, around the question of how ontological knowledge is possible, revealed to us the essence of Kant’s transcendental imagination. First, it is the original unity of receptivity and spontaneity which is the common root of sense and understanding, and thus an imagination is the source of original thinking. Furthermore, it is identity with pure original time. It is the pure self-affecting time (ecstatic temporality) which institutes the finite transcendence. In instituting the structure of transcendence, the transcendental imagination also institutes itself. This is to say that it is not an accomplished fact but a continual coming to pass. By his critical interpretation, the imagination was taken to an incomparable state that he considered.