What is political imagination? If we say the other fellow’s point of view, the emphasis is first on point, on something spatial. Difference between understanding and imagination: I understand something or somebody directly, if I understand something, I always understand it within a wider horizon of things which I take for granted. I isolate the thing I understand and put myself into a direct relationship to it.
If I understand somebody, I understand him in a direct relationship, within the framework of the world, but still him directly isolated from all others. If I want to understand him, I first must know from which point of view he sees things, and that means where he is located in the world. I must imagine the world from his point of location. Example: the table between us.
Imagination is the prerequisite of understanding: You should imagine how the world looks from the different point of view where these people are located. The assumption is: It is the common world of us all and that what is between you and this other location like the table separates you and bind you to him at the same time. That is the meaning of ONE world.
--Hannah Arendt (lecture notes from a 1955 class she taught courtesy of Samantha Rose Hill @ her Illuminations site here (a must for any student of Arendt's work).
