The Imaginary Nature of the Social. A Morphological Approach

This chapter intends to explore the imaginary through Goethe’s maps of the science of shapes. Oriented by this analytic approach, the imaginary will be taken to mean the socio-anthropological environment in which the creativity of human nature is manifest. As we shall see, in giving life to images free from stimulation-response behavior, man is the only animal capable of imagining a world in terms of possibility. It is by virtue of this open relationship that men, engaging in reciprocal action, give form to the socio-anthropological environments in which they live. Thanks to the social morphology of Simmel, Spengler, and Jünger, we shall see how, for a certain time, human ecosystems stabilize around certain formative principles determined socially and historically. These are the rotation centers of associated life that differentiate and change the imaginary reality of the social.