A Husserlian Account of the Power of the Imaginary

This essay will concentrate on two brief texts that provide some indications about how Husserl thinks about theatrical and literary works of art as specific instances of Phantasie, about what he means by their "aesthetic" properties, and how this extended sense of the aesthetic points to their ability to move and renew the human spirit in ways consistent with Husserl's own phenomenological enterprise, but in another sense in ways that surpass what theoretical enterprises like philosophy can achieve on their own. The two texts are, first of all, excerpts from research manuscripts from around 1918 published as Text 18 in Husserliana XXIII, Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung 1895-1925, and secondly an even briefer occasional essay written around the middle of the 20's entitled "Shaw und die Lebenskraft des Abendlands," published as Beilage XI to the Kaizo articles in Husserliana XXVII.