W. Allen Ashby

Stonehenge: a Phenomenology of the Imagination W. Allen Ashby

Stonehenge is a Phenomenology of the Imagination. It seeks to explore and elucidate 12 separate aspects of the imagination as it interacts with us in our daily lives. Specifically it looks at the imagination?s role as: the source of our deepest personal experiences, the creator of our memories, as the agent of our confusion, as a trickster, an aspect of the erotic, and as the origin of nothing. It also examines the role of the imagination as the creator of our rituals, perceptions and judgment, as a destroyer, the ground of our being, an actor, and finally, as a way of life. Each of the 12 chapters is centered in images which are often taken from literature, and of course the title itself is taken from a place of the earth that is still a mystery, from a field of broken and fallen stones in the Salisbury plain in England. The aim of the philosophical effort here is to walk around the imagination as one can walk around the circle of those stones, keeping the mystery alive inside.