erroneous initial positions into accepting some form of psychological
unconscious – a stance he considers the equivalent of a “reduction to
the absurd.”
Sartre cites Bergson’s publications of the late 1800 s, including the
one that reportedly led him into philosophy in the first place, as
effecting a kind of revolution in its rejection of associationism and
its corresponding insistence that “consciousness is entirely synthesis,
that synthesis is the very mode of psychic existence” (Ion 41 – 42 ). But,
despite its new vocabulary, Sartre claims that Bergson’s thought
remains wedded to the classical problem of the image and in the final
analysis offers nothing new in response (Ion 42 ). The culprit is
Bergson’s metaphysics, which leaves the image an ambiguous and
unstable hybrid of thing and recollection. In Sartre’s Husserlian view,
Bergson conceives of the image as “impressing itself on the spirit like a
content in the receptacle of memory rather than as a living moment of
spiritual activity,” as Husserl might conceptualize it (Ion 49 ). When
this is translated into the vocabulary of intentional analysis,^13 Sartre
claims that Bergson continuously confuses the noemawith thenoesis
and so is led to confer on this synthetic reality, which he callsimage,
sometimes the value of a noema (the object of our intending: for
example, the tree as imagined) and other times that of a noesis
(our manner of intending the object: our imaging the tree).
(^13) If all consciousness is “intentional” in nature, then its character as intentional is bipolar: the
subject pole and the object pole; object intended (technically thenoema, the tree as seen, for
example) and the act of intending that object (the noetic act, the seeing of the tree). Given
that all consciousness is intentional, that is, consciousnessofan other, Husserl mines this rich
field of intentionality for descriptions of the phenomena that intentionality presents. Specif-
ically, one can describe either of the two poles of our consciousness, namely, the object-as-
intended or the act of intending the object, for distinctive characteristics. In the case of
someone perceiving or imagining a tree, for example, one can focus on the various features of
the treeasperceived or imagined, or alternatively attend to our perceiving or imagining the
tree. Intentional analysis will “fine tune” these alternative descriptions so that, while
remaining within the realm of phenomena, one can come to see the essential difference
between perceiving and imagining an object. We shall observe Sartre employing this
intentional analysis and its “eidetic” reductions of the experience in his masterful description
of “imaging consciousness” inThe Imaginary. But, though the two poles (act and object) can
be distinguished, they cannot be separated because there is no intending without an object
nor any object without an intending act. That is the significance of the intentional character
of consciousness. As we noted earlier, intentional analyses can be carried out within the
sphere of the natural attitude as the essays cited innote 7 above attest.
84 First triumph:The Imagination