On the one hand, Heidegger claims that the imagination as imaginatio conveys the usual sense of apprehending beings as present, whereby “all beyng and its opening constitute a formed image [Gebilde] that is added to what supposedly stands on its own.”[P. 247] Within this perspective, imagination forms part and parcel of metaphysical conceptuality that Heidegger specifically calls into question in the works from the late 1930s. At the same time, Heidegger suggests the possibility of another approach that would conceive of imagination neither as a faculty nor as transcendental but instead as “the event itself, wherein all transfiguration occurs.” As Ereignis, “imagination” (as Einbildung but not imaginatio) means “occurrence of the clearing itself.”[P. 247] These brief remarks leave open the door to a possible reconceptualization of Einbildung, though perhaps not imaginatio, in terms of the event and the clearing, even if Heidegger himself does not pursue this alternative in subsequent texts.

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