Philosophy + Literature Workshop: Robbie Kubala - Proust on Imagination, Beauty, and the Imagination of Beauty

The theme of reality's disappointment is pervasive across Proust's writings: the imagination sets an evaluative standard that reality, once we experience it, invariably fails to meet. In an earlier paper (Kubala 2023), Kubala argued that part of the Proustian solution is to defer and prolong the pursuit of what one desires for as long as is practically possible. This paper considers the other part of the solution, which is the satisfying experience of beauty. While the imagination is to blame for its role in unsatisfying desire satisfaction, it is also partly responsible for the experience of beauty. Kubala argues that Proust is committed to distinguishing two kinds of exercise of the imagination, which he calls ‘imaginativeness’ and ‘mental imagery’. The former is constitutively connected to, while the latter can play no role in, the experience of beauty. Drawing on an extended comparison with Kant's aesthetics, Kubala show that for Proust there is no room for disappointment internal to the experience of beauty.