On David Hume's Imagination

On David Hume's Imagination

David Hume has quite a different view of imagination than John Locke Many critics, however, do not differentiate the former from the latter when they talk about imagmation. Their prejudice that imagination of empiricism is mechanical and thus not creative has established the traditional view that Wordsworth's imagination is not as creative as Coleridge's on the grounds that the farmer is more associated with empiricism. However, Hume regards imagination as an ability with which we can imagine anything, but only with one condition: to depend on simple perception. He believes that we can imagme something that we have not experienced by the process of separating simple ideas. Thus, the problem comes down to whether we believe in the possibility that a human being can create something out of nothing, not whether transcendentalism is more creative than empiricism. Deleuze's praise for Hume's empiricism helps us to view his idea of imagmation in a new perspective. His negative attitude toward transcendence has been regarded as non-creative but when we disillusion ourselves from the myth of transcendence, we can realize how creative the function of his imagmation is.