with the stand of the French Communist Party on a particular issue at
that time, he is “reasoning from [his own] principles and not theirs.”^17
Let us conclude this analysis ofThe Imaginationwith an example of a
“creative” interpretation of a Husserlian concept, the problematic “hyle ́”
or “stuff ” to be informed by the intention. Without getting into the
disputes among Husserlians, let us merely note that inIdeas IHusserl
introduces this well-known Aristotelian terminology of “matter and
form” (the determinable and the determining features of an object
respectively).^18 But this relationship concerns our “sensuous” intuitions:
they can be analyzed into a material and a formal component. It is the
nature of this material component, the hyle ́or “stuff,” that is at issue.
What I wish to underscore is that Sartre interprets it as serving an
“analogical” role in sense perception. Thus inThe Imaginationhe claims
that our perception of a red object, when subjected to an intentional
analysis, yields a determinable subjective element, the hyle ́, that can be
considered a “quasi-object” in that it is the “by means of which” we
perceive the red object that is the “object” of our perceptual awareness
properly speaking. The reason for this appeal to what medieval scholas-
tics called the “objectum formale quo”^19 was to account for the functional
differences between our imagining and our perceiving while continuing
to sustain a realist position in epistemology.
Sartre is clear that Husserl’s chief contribution in this regard was
his application of the theory of intentionality to our imaging conscious-
ness. Just as intentionality freed us from the “inner world” with regard
to perception, so it does, perhaps counterintuitively, with regard to
our images. They are not miniatures or simulacra “inside” our
(^17) Jean-Paul Sartre,The Communists and PeacewithA Reply to Claude Leforttrans. Martha H.
Fletcher and Philip R. Berk respectively (New York: George Braziller, 1968 ), 68 (hereafter
CP), andLefort;Les Communistes et la Paix(Sitvi: 80 – 384 , 168 ) andRe ́ponse a`Claude Lefort
18 (Sitvii:^7 –^93 ).
As noted earlier, Sartre was unfamiliar with volumesiioriiiof Husserl’sIdeasBoth were
published posthumously. Merleau-Ponty had traveled to Louvain in April of 1939 to consult
the manuscript ofIdeasii, which offered a fuller view of Husserl’s theory of social subjects
(“subjects of a higher order”) as well asExperience and Judgmentand §§ 28 – 72 of theCrisis.
But Sartre seems to have lost interest in Husserlian exegesis by then and is not known to
19 have viewed the manuscripts even after copies were transported to the Sorbonne in^1958.
The “objectum formalequo” is the formal object “by means of which” we perceive an object as
distinct from the “objectum quod” which we actually perceive as a transcendent phenom-
enon. Metaphorically, it is the window, not the landscape.
The Imagination 89