On Personality and Imagination

A speculative study concerning the role of imagination in representing and constructing the subjective of self meaningfully involves the intertwining between the theme of the image with that of the imagination as a common speculative practice. In this paper, the author will proceed from a philosophical overview around the question of personal identity to an exploration onto certain current uses of imagination in the most recent research on human sciences and neurosciences. The aim is to summarise the consequences of these uses by determining which theoretical-speculative anthropological model must be considered as better mirroring the current scientific advancements in implementing the function of imagination in self representation and personal identity realisation. The author proposes here that Paul Ricoeur’s anthropological theory does not simply pose a fruitful problematic approach to the dialectic of image and imagination in the human identity development, but rather, in an original way, it summarises a significant part of the speculative and scientific dilemmas on the formation and constitution of personal identity. This formation and constitution forms a process takes place between the mind and body, reality and imagination, self-representation and social interaction, relation and recognition.