Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht: Imagination as Sensory Power

In the organizer's words:

With the IMPULSE-Focus program we offer public talks and discussions with high-profile scientists, academics, artists, and intellectual figures, open to a broad audience.

Lecture: Imagination as Sensory Power. An Energy at the Edge of Human Existence

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht, Standford University

- June 10, 2026: 6pm (c.t.) to 8pm (s.t.)

- Lecture Hall VII, Main Building, University of Bonn

- Open to the public - no registration required

Over the past few decades, debates among analytic philosophers have brought a new clarity to the broad conceptual field of "imagination" through incisive distinctions, thereby directing intellectual attention to how this faculty is used in everyday life. Seen in this light, any focus on its effects as "sensory imagination" marks a return to classical notions about connections with aesthetic behavior. At the same time, it prompts a new reflection on the status of objects of consciousness, which, despite resembling perceptions in their physical vividness, are not dependent on environmental impressions as perceptions are. How does imagination succeed, to paraphrase a pressing contemporary question not only for scholars of the humanities: how does imagination succeed in suggesting various possibilities for transcending real existence through literary fictions and myths of higher worlds?