Dufrenne’s Investigation On The Relationship Between Aesthetic Perception And Imagination

Dufrenne is a famous representative of phenomenological aesthetics.Imagination is an important concept in his theory of the aesthetic perception.Dufrenne broke through the concept of imagination in the sense of the traditional psychology,and regarded imagination as an important part of the aesthetic experience.Imagination is no longer boundless associations and illusions,nor does it produce scenes that have nothing to do with aesthetic objects but is the imagination of phenomenology.Imagination has both a priori and empirical aspects.It is a kind of regular imagination.The priori imagination guarantees this kind of rules.Imagination of experience obeys this rule,making it act only in the "field of possibility".The real purpose of imagination is to reproduce the image of aesthetic objects.Starting from Dufrenne’s phenomenological aesthetics theory,and focusing on the aesthetic objects in the phenomenology of aesthetic experience,this article combs and analyzes the relationship between Dufrenne’s aesthetic perception and imagination.Then it clarifies the status and function of imagination in the stage of aesthetic reproduction.This thesis is mainly divided into four parts: The first part sorts out the ideological origin of the relationship between Dufrenne’s the aesthetic perception and imagination based on which it reveals the inevitability of the process of Dufrenne’s aesthetic perception.The second part mainly summarizes the theoretical starting point of Dufrenne’s the aesthetic perception and imagination theory.The theoretical starting point of Dufrenne’s entire aesthetic experience theory is the aesthetic object,and the theory of the relationship between the aesthetic perception and imagination is based on the composition of the aesthetic object theory.The third part mainly discusses the problems of Dufrenne’s the aesthetic perception and imagination.In this part we briefly explain the three stages of the aesthetic perception and point out the connotation of imagination.Then we discuss the transcendental and empirical aspects of imagination respectively.The fourth part explains that imagination can help the viewer to find meaning outside of "appearance" in the aesthetic perception and point out that the real function of imagination is to grasp the representation of aesthetic objects in appearance.