Last May, I joined the Image and Imagination Conference in Soochow University in Taiwan. I presented my paper titled “Productive Imagination as an Educational Theory of Knowledge”. The abstract is as follows:
What is the role of imagination in the learning process? To answer this question, one might primarily consider imagination as a marginal concept amongst plenty of cognitive ideas tackled in education and epistemology. This, however, considers only imagination that is reproductive and seeking to replicate reality as objects of study. Creativity, insightfulness, fiction, and other manifestations of imagination are viewed as merely consequential to knowledge as opposed to being integral to true knowing. To minimise the role of imagination in education in this way mirrors how traditional educational paradigms view knowledge as a process of acquiring information or beliefs that are as close to the reference as possible, perpetuating a separation between theory and practise, and limiting human knowledge to terms of accuracy, as in the dichotomy of truthfulness and falsehoods. This study presents Paul Ricoeur’s concept of ‘productive imagination‘ as a theory of knowledge that bridges the rational and the empirical, the theoretical and the practical, and embraces the surreal in the process of learning as knowledge acquisition and development. Such an understanding of knowledge and the learning process opens up possibilities for education to be a space in which reality and existence become more than just objects to be mastered in and through study and instead rich references of artistry and insightfulness that make for a more meaningful being in the world for the good. Creativity is not a monopoly of the poetic, as Ricoeur says, rather it is fundamental to knowledge. The cultivation of imagination, and therefore an education and cycle of knowing that is based on productively imagining, is necessary to a good life.
My goal in this project is to ask how productive imagination answers the age-old question “how do we know what we know”. In the past few years of my research on education, my references and frameworks have always centred around concepts that transform the abstract into something more concrete—what are the steps to knowing, what are the methods to teaching, how can we present education definitively? Then I came across the recently published Lectures on Imagination by Paul Ricœur. I took up the book in my graduate Philosophy of Art class. Whether it was the persistence of the question of education as my master’s thesis topic or something else, I ended up reflecting on Ricœur’s lectures with the lenses of epistemology and philosophy of education. Or maybe it is the other way around: that I somehow found it an interesting endeavour to appropriate Ricœur’s framework to understand the question of knowledge and the systems around it.
The working idea, as I have shared in the conference, is this: that the productive imagination sheds light on the shadowed parts of knowing on individual, dialogical, and institutional levels. To “know” does not just mean having some sort of appropriate information or skill, to be educated does not just mean being able to do something with those things; the excellence of both knowing and education is in the imagination. Similar to what Ricoeur says, art is not just for artists. I think reflecting on how integral the imagination is to human being can help develop a more cohesive understanding about what it means to ‘live a good life’ (which education is suppose to develop and is the point of ‘knowing’).
I think Ricœur’s concept of productive imagination is essentially liberating, not just for epistemology or philosophy of education (or aesthetics or philosophy) but in general. It opens up “new” worlds—the world for imagination to be explored and this “other” world which, with imagination, seems to have more in it that meets the [mental/physical] eye.
With that, I think it would nice to reflect on ideas of play in this context as well. During the conference, I was also able to hear some more ideas with which I can continue exploring this thesis on philosophy of education, as well as so many curiously wonderful and intriguing research on Ricœur. It has been almost over two months since the conference and my notes have remained rich with the things I learned from my fellow participants. With that said, I am extremely grateful for my department, Department of Philosophy, and university, Ateneo de Manila University, for supporting and providing for this conference trip.
On to more imaginings then: “Whereas reproductive images are marginal as regards to reality, it’s the genius of productive imagination—of the fictional—to open and change reality. Productive imagination may enlarge and even create new worldviews, new ways of looking at things, and, finally, may change even our way of being in the world… The imagination has not only a function of giving an instance but of building the framework of reference to connect the potential meanings of the word with the actual givenness of the situation.” (Paul Ricœur, Fiction (1), Lectures on Imagination 2024)
Conference website (where abstracts of other presentations—and other information—can be accessed): https://myweb.scu.edu.tw/~ricoeur.center/