ricoeurand mulla sadra on imagination

The present article studies Paul Ricoeur and Mulla Sadra's views on imagination, particularly its influential role in knowledge. Though their philosophies differ in principle, they share certain ideas in common. Ricoeur, contemporary philosopher and hermeneut, utilizes semiotics, linguistics, structuralism, and so on, to enrich hermeneutics. Language, thus, gets a central role in his philosophy. The basic difference of Ricoeur’s idea on imagination which distinguishes him from Mulla Sadra is that ‘language’ is used as a basis to explain imagination; he explains the role of imagination in knowledge through language. But Mulla Sadra does not directly deals with language, but considers act of imagination in constituting knowledge as an act of certain faculty of the soul. But in spite of this basic difference, both philosophers consider imagination as a mediator between external world and internal world of the mind and both explain this possibility by the notion of integration of two different issues.