Imagination and representation in Husserl's phenomenology

Husserl distinguishes imagination as an intuitive experience from pure thought. He places imagination in opposition to perception among intuitive experiences. Imagination, which was not directly addressed in the early years of phenomenology, became the subject of Husserl's lectures in the same period with lectures on inner time consciousness in 1905. This thesis, while elaborating imagination in these lectures, finds at the core of the difficulties Husserl encountered some of his presuppositions about immanence in the early phenomenological theory of perception. It demonstrates that the difficulties encountered when addressing imagination are resolved through the development of the notion of impressional consciousness and of retention and protention modifications related to impression in the lectures on inner time consciousness. Ultimately, it reveals how the issue of imagination transformed from the beginning of phenomenology to the transcendental period. In doing so, through the notion of 'representation', it problematizes the duality between perception and imagination and the relationship between them. This thesis argues for the importance of the phenomenology of imagination in achieving a genuine understanding of intentionality which marks the displacement of 'representation' in traditional philosophy by the phenomenological theory of perception.