DOI: 10.4324/9781003208150-8 The concept of imagination has a long and complicated history. Virtually no major philosopher, including Aristotle, Hobbes, Kant, and Hegel, has avoided refection on one or other aspects of this fascinating dimension of human existence. This long and distinguished history, however, is not the concern of this chapter, not even as it informs Rorty’s rich conception of imagination. Indeed, as with most of the concepts in Rorty’s toolbox, his understanding of imagination is highly original and idiosyncratic, less the result of traceable direct infuences than the product of intense curios- ity and philosophical craftsmanship—a talent for ironic redescription, as Rorty himself would put it in CIS. Although we can agree that the concept of imagination is practically absent from Rorty’s work until his turn from philosophy to cultural politics in the 1980s, the truth is that the seeds of his conception are there to be found across his entire output, already noticeable in his early metaphilosophical refections—for instance, in his distinction between philosophy-as-proposal versus philosophy-as-discov- ery in the introduction to TLT. Thus, what we are after is to be found in the midst of a constellation of related notions that emerge and subside alternatively, some of which will sound familiar to the seasoned Rortyan, others perhaps not so much: edifcation, redescription, inverse hermeneu- tics, reweaving, irony, poetry, experimentation, abnormal (revolutionary) discourse, breaking the crust of convention, continuing the conversation, expanding logical space, etc. Entangled in this family of words, the care- ful observer will detect one of the deepest tensions in Rorty’s thinking, one that has been pointed out by friendly and hostile critics alike, the oscillation between romanticism and pragmatism or, if one wants to get combative, between aestheticism and social responsibility. Rivers of ink have fowed condemning Rorty’s supposed irrationalism, and it is not my purpose to rehearse or endorse those familiar lines of criticism here; on the contrary, I wish to gather the ingredients of a pragmatic conception of imagination, one that effectively situates Rorty within the continuum of the philosophical tradition he did so much to enliven. 5 Imagination as a Social Virtue Santiago Rey 9781032074894_C005.indd 71 05-02-2022 01:49:14