Imaginative Sight and the Faculty of Desire

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores Kant’s account of the role imagination plays in our practical lives in light of how imagination, as a capacity that enables us to see more, contributes to our pursuit of happiness and morality through the faculty of desire. It offers a reconstruction of how the imaginative activity of seeing more bears on three basic ways in which we exercise this faculty: the specification of practical principles, the assessment of concrete situations in light of particular practical principles, and deliberation about which course of action to pursue in concrete situations. It also addresses Kant’s account of happiness as an “ideal of imagination,” and argues that he ascribes it an important role vis-à-vis exercises of the lower and higher faculties of desire. Finally, it takes up the role that imaginatively seeing more can play in relation to testing maxims in light of the categorical imperative.