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The article presents a discussion on aesthetics and apolaustics. The term aesthetics, referring both to the knowledge derived from sense perception and the faculty that makes it possible, is attributed to German Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, while Immanuel Kant uses aesthetic judgement, necessary and universal referring to states of pleasure. Apolaustic means devoted to enjoyment. Aesthetics now focuses on the apolaustic experience of value and categories used to name it, including beauty.

This paper examines the role of the imagination in Hume's epistemology. There specific powers of the imagination are identified -- the imagistic, conceptual, and productive -- as well as three corresponding kinds of fictions based on the degree of belief contained in each class of ideas the imagination creates. These are generic fictions, real and mere fictions, and necessary, fictions, respectively. Through these manifestations, it is emphasized, Hume presents the imagination both as the positive force behind human creativity and a subversive presence that transforms experience while at once making it possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]