In contemporary debates, the realist position (here speculative realism/materialism is of particular interest) not only implies a belief in what is real, but also allows us to ascertain a certain possibility of accessing reality, thus bringing about the question of correlation as it pertains to determination and subordination. This article borrows from Cornelius Castoriadis’ arguments regarding Georg Cantor’s set theory to criticize the primacy of mathematics in Quentin Meillassoux’s thinking. At the same time, it argues that there are three regimes (...) of correlation. The first two senses of correlation imply determining subordination, whereas the third one invokes a new understanding of correlation: being is always related to the subject, but is never determined or subordinated by it. In this light, Castoriadis’s notion of radical imagination aims to maintain an emancipatory meaning – the call for an anamorphic procedure of change in perspective, to the gestures of constant re-determination, without any pretense to totality. (shrink)

According to Sartre, irreal objects, such as centaur, appear to consciousness without any temporal determination. Husserl also speaks about quasi-time, but this quasi, even when it constitutes irreality, remains bound to the general time of consciousness which is one of the fundamental synthesising moments within the structure of consciousness. Only inner temporality guarantees the unity of human consciousness. The acts of fantasy also belong to the general synthesis of consciousness. Time is a continuous synthesis constituting consciousness itself and offering a (...) common basis for all experiences. Transcendental structures, according to Kant and Heidegger, are testimony to this – the radical temporality of imagination makes the opening of the horizons of reality possible. The link between fantasy, imagination and time is more fundamental than the link between them and perception because the former, irreducible and irreversible, constitutes the latter.Keywords: phantasy, imagination, temporality, time, reality. (shrink)