Good question …

… Imagination is a powerful tool: why is philosophy afraid of it? | Aeon Ideas. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Kant’s bifurcation hints at why philosophers treat the imagination with both despair and delight. Perhaps the kind of imagination we despise is totally different from its more useful cousin. But in accepting this subdivision, we give up on the possibility of seeing the imagination as a unified mental faculty – which is perhaps more how we experience it.

I have come to think of imagination as the integrating faculty of intelligence.