The danger of abusing the discovery of the truth value of imagination for retrogressive tendencies is exemplified by the work of Carl Jung. More empathically than Freud, he has insisted on the cognitive force of imagination. According to Jung, phantasy is undistinguishably united with all other mental functions, it appears now as primeval, now as the ultimate and most audacious synthesis of all capabilities. Phantasy is above all the creative activity out of which flow the answers to all answerable questions; it is the mother of all possibilities, in which all mental opposites as well as the conflict between internal and external world are united. Phantasy has always built the bridge between the irreconcilable demands of object and subject, extroversion and introversion. The simultaneously retrospective and expectant character of imagination is thus clearly stated: it looks not only back to an aboriginal golden past, but also forward to still unrealized but realizable possibilities.
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About Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse was a 19th-century American german–american philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist. Herbert Marcuse was a German–American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at Berlin's Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin and then at the University of Freiburg, where he received his PhD. Read more on Wikipedia →
Themes
- Imagination — The creative power of the mind and visionary thinking