From Immanuel Kant to Gilbert Simondon: Schemas of Operational Imagination

The rethinking of schemes by Gilbert Simondon marks a radical break from the Kantian tradition. For Kant, the schematism of pure reason served as an a priori mechanism for subordinating sensory diversity to the categories of understanding, ensuring the possibility of knowledge while remaining confined within the transcendental sphere of the subject. In contrast, Simondon makes an ontological turn. His "operational schemes" are rooted not in the structures of consciousness but in the very dynamics of the material world, primarily in technology. Schemes are immanent patterns of development of "technical lines," crystallizing in the process of invention through "productive imagination." Simondon's novelty lies in the rejection of the primacy of reason over experience: the scheme arises not prior to experience as its condition but from the practical, operational participation of thought with things, from the effort to resolve specific technical problems. Here, imagination is not reproduction or combinatorics but a force rooted in action and materiality, generating new forms of being of technology. The research is based on the consistent application of complementary methods appropriate to Simondon’s dynamic non-substantial ontology: genetic-critical method, techno-ontological analysis, operational hermeneutics, and comparative-topological approach. In this case, not only the immanence of schemes to technical lines is revealed, but also Simondon's break with Kantian transcendentalism is highlighted. This methodology allows us to avoid the reification of schemes, revealing them as living tools of procedural reality, which corresponds to Simondon's key "maxim," namely, to know means to follow the individuation of being. The relevance of the Simondonian concept of "operational schemes" is difficult to overestimate today. In the era of algorithms, interfaces, and self-learning systems, it offers a powerful tool for understanding how technical objects themselves generate schemes that mediate our thinking and action. Digital platforms, artificial neural networks, and "smart" environments – all embody "dynamic schemes." Moreover, this approach is relevant as an epistemological shift: it overcomes the divide between theory and practice, reason and matter. Operational schemes assert an ontology of relation and action, where knowledge and invention arise not from contemplation but from engaged interaction with the world. This makes Simondon's philosophy indispensable for understanding the joint evolution of humans and their artificial environment.

Simondon, Kant, Bergson, individuation, transduction, pre-individual, metastability, dynamic scheme, technical diagram, imagination