Edmund Husserl devoted considerable attention to the study of the concept of imagination [Phantasie] from his early writings to his late period of research. He has shown that imaginative consciousness builds a specific type of world that has its own temporal dimension. Imaginative consciousness is defined as “presentificational” [vergegenwärtigendes] consciousness, which places phenomena in a certain time horizon. His assistant, Fink [Eugen Fink], will be one of the first authors to show that the phenomenological concept of imagination and memory does not simply present some “theory of images”. Namely, he argued that Husserl’s goal was to explore the role of the image in new horizons and worlds and to show the specific time and manner in which pictorial presentations build an image-world [Bildwelt].
An insight that will determine further exposure is the distinction between two types of fantasy phenomena constructions: the first represents the mode in which Husserl examines the role of pure fantasy in the transcendental-phenomenological approach, and in the second one he argues about the manifold ways in which the subject mediates his image-world and creates not only the aesthetic objects, but also the whole new culture-world that arises from the surrounding world [Umwelt]. The world of culture represents a special domain of material ontology, and it is not possible to define it without the conceptualisation of the notion of the life-world [Lebenswelt]. In order to present the specific way in which Husserl sees the possibility of the self-renewal of humankind through the cultural domain, comparing Schiller’s [Friedrich von Schiller], Husserl’s, and Fink’s concepts of culture one can emphasise why this domain is crucial for the possibility of transforming humanity.