Fernando Pessoa: Imagination and the Self – A Dialogue with Jonardon Ganeri
On 19 April 2026 at 6:00 PM IST, Poorvam International Journal of Creative Arts and Cultural Expressions invites you to a captivating philosophical dialogue with Prof. Jonardon Ganeri on his landmark contribution to the philosophy of mind, selfhood, and cross-cultural thought. What does it mean to be a self? And what happens when imagination becomes not merely a faculty of the mind, but its very mode of self-creation? These are the questions at the heart of Fernando Pessoa: Imagination and the Self — a work that takes as its unlikely point of departure the life and writings of Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935), the Portuguese poet and prose writer who stands as one of the most philosophically daring figures in modern literature. Pessoa, affiliated with no institution and beholden to no school, invented for himself a radical new philosophy of the human subject. Writing in both Portuguese and English, he argued that imagination is the key to human flourishing — that each of us possesses the power to pluralize ourselves, to live simultaneously and in sequence as a plurality of distinct subjects. He called these crafted inner lives "heteronyms": artefact minds, poetically conjured selves, new ways of experiencing the world. In Fernando Pessoa: Imagination and the Self, Prof. Ganeri reconstructs this bold philosophical vision with both rigour and sensitivity. But what makes this work truly distinctive is the bridge it builds across traditions. Ganeri traces deep resonances between Pessoa's pluralist theory of selfhood and classical Indian philosophical thought — particularly the Mokṣopāya (or Yogavāsiṣṭha), the great metaphysical storybook of India, with its nested virtual realities and reconstructed selves, and strands of reflection found in the Mahābhārata and the Upaniṣads. Far from a coincidental parallel, Pessoa himself was well-read in Indian literature and philosophy, making this a genuine cross-traditional encounter, not merely a comparative exercise. This event promises a rich and searching conversation on: The philosophy of imagination and its role in constructing the self Pessoa's concept of "heteronyms" and the plurality of inner life The meeting points between modern European thought and classical Indian philosophy The Yogavāsiṣṭha, the Mahābhārata, and their theories of virtual selfhood What poetry and literature can reveal that philosophy alone cannot The possibility — and the stakes — of genuinely cross-traditional philosophical engagement Join us for an evening that moves across continents and centuries, from the saudade-filled streets of Lisbon to the metaphysical forests of ancient India, in pursuit of a richer, more plural understanding of what it means to be a self. Date: Saturday, 19 April 2026 Time: 6:00 PM IST onwards RSVP: editor@poorvam.com Curated by Poorvam International Journal of Creative Arts and Cultural Expressions
