Murdoch seems to explore the role played by imagination in the grasp of truth throughout both her philosophical activity and her work as a novelist, thus providing fertile ground for the dialogue between them. An analysis of her philosophical treatment of imagination is here put forth, as a preliminary step towards that dialogue. The whole analysis is based on the assumption that imagination lies at the core of Murdoch’s ethics of vision; furthermore, Murdoch’s emphasis on the interpenetration between aesthetic and moral imagination and her idea of art as the great clue to morals are regarded as methodological pointers, suggesting to trace out the cognitive role of imagination and its moral import by clarifying the sense in which we are all artists. Imagination then emerges as a mediating function involved in the activity of picturing what is other, so that the individual’s interpretative engagement with reality relies on it. To shed more light on its significance, the following issues are also dealt with: the role of imagination in balancing the demands of form and contingency; the experience of the world as a task for the creative imagination of individuals (i.e. Murdoch’s reworking of Kant’s theory of imagination); the bond between imagination and Eros and the transformation of both required for realism; the achievements and limits of imagination as the hallmark of the human condition in relation to the truth.
