Productive Imagination in Painting from Ricoeur's Point of View

The study of imagination has always had a significant role in the study of art and aesthetics. And imagination plays a central role in Ricoeur's philosophical system; a subject that has received less attention. It was Ricoeur's goal to bring the productive aspect of imagination back to the main text of philosophy, by presenting a critical reading of the history of philosophy. By using Emanuel Kant's imagination analysis, Ricoeur revived the various dimensions of imagination in the field of perception, to achieve a comprehensive theory of productive imagination. This paper attempts to address the importance of painting as a work of art and its relevance to reality, by studying the path taken by Ricoeur to present a theory of productive imagination. In this regard, explaining the role of Iconic Augmentation, which is one of the latent characteristics of the productive aspect of imagination, better defines the action present in the image and the dialectical position of language and image. Ultimately, painting, as a fictional work that its idea's reference is not merely a representation, becomes more real as its imaginativeness increases. The result is a new approach to describe the nature of painting as a work of art.