Romanticism In Richard Kearney's The Wake Of The Imagination

Register to read the introduction… This period emphasized the self, creativity, imagination and the value of art. It was a movement that strongly emphasized emotion. It also legitimized ‘individual imagination' as a major authority. Which in turn gave rise to ‘free expression' in art.

With such an emphasis on feelings and imagination many thinkers of this period introduced philosophies and theologies of their own on this topic. Richard Kearney in The Wake of the Imagination, explores the various concepts of imagining from the classical to the modern. Kearney, states that the concept of "imagination" was released from its imprisoned status by thinkers such as Kant, Fichte, and Schelling.

Accordingly Kearney establishes that this was accomplished by demonstrating that the imagination was not a reproductive act, but a ‘production' of human consciousness, that the image was a creative act, and that it was an inner transcendental unity which combined body and soul. Thus, this human power of imagination resulting in autonomy.

Kearney suggests that the …show more content…
For Nietzsche the "will to power" is the most basic human drive. He thought this will to power to be a creative force and that all human beings would progress to a new level of being. It is only when the creative individual expresses his will to power by combining the elements of unconscious and conscious can he progress- self-realization/ self transformation. Zarathustra proclaims: "I overcome myself, the sufferer; I carried my own ashes to the mountains; I invented a brighter flame for myself. And behold, then this ghost fled from me". Self-overcoming is of course self-transformation, and Zarathustra has carried to the mountains the ashes of the conventional self that he has