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The Kantian approach has its distinct advantages, the chief of which lies in its promise to fix the meaning of this concept with some precision. Although Kant was not the first thinker to have used the concept of productive imagination (Christian Wolff and Alexander Baumgarten had already made use of it before him), he is the one who transformed it into a concept of central philosophical importance and who uncovered its genuinely transcendental problematic and significance. Disregarding Kant’s precritical employment of this concept (see Ferrarin 2018), which largely consists of an uncritical appropriation of how this concept had already been employed by Wolff and Baumgarten, we come across three different frameworks in Kant’s critical writings, through which this concept has been employed in its new, transcendental sense (see Lennon 2015). These three frameworks provide the textual basis that underlies the Kantian approach.

First, in the original version of the transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of understanding in the Critique of Pure Reason (the so-called A-Deduction, originally presented in 1781), Kant conceptualizes productive imagination as a faculty of synthesis, the function of which is to establish unity in the manifold. In the A-Deduction, Kant argues that experience as such necessarily relies upon the syntheses of apprehension, association (reproduction) and recognition (Kant 2007, A98-A110). This threefold synthesis is the work of productive imagination, by means of which the sensuous manifold of intuition is transformed into a perceptual image. According to Kant, it is only by means of the transcendental function of the imagination that experience as such becomes possible.

Second, the schematism of the pure concepts of understanding constitutes another framework, within which Kant addresses productive imagination (see Kant 2007, A137 / B176-A147 / B187). The problem Kant confronts here is that of explaining how intuitions are to be subsumed under the categories of the understanding and thus how categories are to be applied to appearances. In this framework, Kant draws a distinction between the empirical faculty of productive imagination and the pure a priori imagination. While the former produces images, the latter produces schemas of sensible concepts. In contrast to images, which are always concrete (for example, the number 5 is concrete, or an equilateral triangle of a specific size is concrete), schemas are general (for example, a number in general, or a triangle in general). Schemas are of two different kinds: there are schemas of sensible concepts (for example, the schema of a dog) and there are schemas of pure concepts of understanding (for example, the schema of substance or the schema of a cause). According to Kant, images cannot correspond to the schemas of pure concepts of understanding. Such schemas are to be conceived as determinations of the inner sense in general (time). Kant identifies productive imagination as the power that enables consciousness to subsume intuitions under the concepts of understanding. In the absence of such subsumption, no experience would be possible. In light of this, one could qualify productive imagination as the power that shapes the field of phenomenality.

Last but not least, third, we cannot ignore Kant’s use of this concept in the Critique of the Power of Judgment (see esp. Kant 2000, First Section, First Book, §49 and §59). In his analysis of beauty, Kant provides us with an account of how productive imagination can function in a genuinely creative way, without subsuming the intuitive manifold under the pregiven categorial structure. In the third Critique, Kant conceptualizes the experience of beauty as a feeling of pleasure which arises from imagination’s capacity to display the harmonious interplay between reason and sensibility.

What, then, is productive imagination as conceptualized from the framework of Kant’s philosophy? First and foremost, it has an intermediary status and is meant to perform a reconciliatory function. In the first Critique, its central function is to harmonize two seemingly irreconcilable spheres—those of understanding and sensibility, which one could qualify as proto-structures of experience. In the third Critique, it once again performs a reconciliatory function, this time establishing harmony between reason and sensibility. In the first Critique, productive imagination realizes the reconciliatory function by means of schematization; in the third Critique, productive imagination realizes the reconciliatory function, in contrast, by means of symbolization (see Zöller 2018). Productive imagination establishes harmony between different faculties by means of generating both schemas (in the first Critique) and symbols (in the third Critique), which predelineate the look of things and make experience of them possible. In this regard, the function of productive imagination is fundamentally pro-creative. In contrast to reproductive imagination, which either replicates or reshapes images out of pre-existent materials, productive imagination reconciles the antagonism between different faculties by rendering the intuitive manifold fit for experience. Still, even though productive imagination does not rely on anything empirical, for Kant, productive imagination is not original in that it relies on understanding and sensibility and serves the function of reconciling the tension between them.

The Kantian approach is not without its drawbacks. Oddly, insofar as we subscribe to the view that the meaning of productive imagination was fixed by Kant, we also need to contend that Kant was not only the first, but also the last philosopher to have spoken of productive imagination. Despite its rich meaning and profound significance, the Kantian conception is too thin to accommodate how this concept has been employed in post-Kantian philosophies of productive imagination. It is hard to maintain in full seriousness that only those who are committed to the fundamental principles of Kantianism have the right to employ the concept of productive imagination.2 Moreover, one might further point out that even Kant himself does not employ the concept of productive imagination in a conceptually unified way and that his use of this term shifted from how he employed it in his precritical writings and how he employed it in the first and third Critique (See Nikulin 2018 and Lennon 2018).