Virtual sensation. Sensory imagination as faculty of aesthetic experience

Abstract

From the thought of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (and referring to different thinkers of different philosophical traditions) I offer here a description of what I call “virtual sensation” and “sensory imagination” to characterize certain capacities of our bodily experience, which allow us to overcome the opposition between perception and imagination, and make possible the aesthetic experience, art, culture, and human life and thinking in general.