Abstract

This paper interrogates the role of imaginative affordances in the interplay between environmental dependence and imaginative autonomy, positing the Japanese garden of Ryōan-ji as an ontological metaphor. Drawing on phenomenological insights (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty) and enactive theories (Rucińska, McClelland), it examines how the garden’s minimalist void—far from a mere absence—acts as an active affordance, inviting mental projection while challenging the necessity of tangible presence for imagination. Ryōan-ji reveals a dialectic of presence and absence, suggesting that imagination oscillates between environmental structuring and intrinsic possibility. This study reconsiders whether the environment is essential for imagining or if it merely amplifies an autonomous creative capacity.