Ontology of Imagination and the Imaginary: Hovering and Schweben in Sallis, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty

Abstract This paper explores an ontological approach to imagination by examining one of its fundamental components: Sallis’ concept of hovering in comparison with the concept of Schweben in Husserl’s phenomenology of imagination and the concept of flottement in Merleau-Ponty’s ontology. Sallis, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty share a bold departure from the psychological approach to imagination; however, the endeavor to shift the concept of imagination from the ontic to the ontological raises a delicate question: how are we to account for the relationship between imagination as an anonymous ontogenetic force and the phenomenal realm structured by the dichotomy of reality and the imaginative faculties of individual subjects? This paper argues that Husserl’s theory of Abschattungen can be radicalized to show that what Sallis defines as the elemental is immanent in things themselves. This creates the ontological correlation between an imaginable, floating reality and active imaginations as personal faculties spurred on by this imaginary and capable of responding to it.