The Imaginary
Sartre describes imaging consciousness through portraits, photographs, dreams and absent objects, then investigates aesthetic experience.
Understanding the text
Published in 1940, the book develops the positive phenomenological analysis prepared by the historical critique of The Imagination in 1936.
Key points
- 01
Absence
Imagining Pierre is not inspecting an inner miniature; it is intending Pierre as absent.
- 02
Analogon
A photograph or actor supplies a material support for an intention exceeding it.
- 03
Freedom
Imagining requires distance from the given without making every fiction materially possible.
How to read it
Compare perceiving and imagining one object, then apply the distinction to theater.
Editions & sources
Summaries and key points are original editorial interpretations. They accompany reading the work and do not replace an edition of the text. Editorial method ↗