Interpretation and evaluation: Rolf-Peter Horstmann’s Kant’s Power of Imagination
Author：Tak-Lap Yeung
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Rolf-Peter Horstmann’s recent work, Kant’s Power of Imagination, is a response to the neglect of “the power of imagination” in the Kantian circle. In this 102-page book, Horstmann analyzes passages relevant to imagination in Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Judgment in detail, with the aim of making Kant’s theory of imagination coherent. He argues for the unique contribution of imagination in the context of the constitution of cognitive objects. Horstmann proposes a “two-stage model of constructing cognitive objects” in his examination of the irreplaceable function and special position of imagination in the cognitive process, and from this, he argues that imagination is an independent, self-standing cognitive faculty. Since imagination is an independent cognitive ability, at least in the context of theoretical philosophy and epistemology, Kant scholars have no reason to ignore it.