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tice, implying option for one of several possibilities, or morę restric-tively, as a critical maieutic of revolutionary practice, needs a vision of the futurę which does not consist in a formalistic extrapolation of some established or just implied development tendencies. In the critical theory creative construction is just as important as the explana-tion of experientially recorded facts. For this reason, in its emergence and development imagination has a far greater role than in that theo-retical thought which moves within the framework of realiable and methodically created empirical evidence. It would be altogether un-reasonable to deny the indispensable function of imagination in theo-retical thinking, just as in any creativeness in generał. In fact, with the exception of Marcuse who in Eros and Cioilization attributed to imagination, capable of building a practicable vision of a different society, only an aesthetical character in opposition to reason,⁸⁵ no other protagonist of the critical theory supported his or a si-milar conception of imagination. Even Marcuse himself in his One-Dimensional Man, which has preserved visible traces of an earlier aestheticism, believes that the correctness of historical projects must be tested by means of rational criteria. However, there is no disagree-ment about the exceptional role of imagination in the emergence of the critical theory. Sartre and Mills share this opinion. This opinion, too, is opposed to the view prevailing in the conservative shades of positivism. Comte, for example, believed that to control imagination by subjecting i to observation is one of the essential features of a positive spirit. But if we wish to preserve the rationality of the theory, its constructions must fulfil certain conditions which justify con-fidence in their feasibility and meet the expectations which are cont-ained in the construction. It is self-evident that the testing of theo-retical constructions about a fundamentally altered society must be left to the futurę and historical practice. Yet, rational expectations, where the image of the futurę is related to the available experience, are peculiar to any practice wishing to safeguard itself from illusion-ism. The critical theory_ has not dealt much with the problem of justifying theoretical constructions about the futurę. Marcuse has out-lined generał criteria for the examination of the reasonableness of historical projects. According to his opinion a project implying a ra-dical change of the existing form of society must be in accordance with the attained level of materiał and intellectual culture, it must prove its advantages over the existing society in improving and dev-eloping production, in having a good knowledge of the basie structur-

⁸⁵ »The aesthetic dimension obivous!y cannot legitimize the principle of reality. Just as imagination, which is its constitutive mental faculty, the field of aesthetics is essentially 'unrealistic ’.. Before the tribunal of the theoretical and practical reason, which has shaped the world according to the performance principle, aesthetic existence stands accused«. (H. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, according to Serbo-Croatian translation. Naprijed, Zagreb, 1965, p. 141). And yet, Marcuse underlined the epistemological value of imagination which he opposed to reason. »The truth value of imagination applies not only to the past but also to the futurę: the forms of freedom and happiness which it evokes seek to become historical reality«. (Ibid., p. 121.)

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