thus rendering association superfluous. Consciousness is moved by
motives, not causes, a remark he will repeat inBeing and Nothingness.^32
Sartre reveals a keen awareness of the insufficiency of imagistic
thinking if it resists the inclination to move “beyond” image to concept,
where such is possible; that is, the refusal to shift from idea as image
(the prereflective) to idea as idea (reflective consciousness). He calls this
warped thought: “Here the thought is enclosed in the image and the
image is given as adequate to the thought.” In such stilted thinking, what
he terms the “ideal sense” or structure of the image is absorbed in, if not
subordinated to, its material structure, losing sight of the inadequacy of
the latter.
In the vast majority of cases the material structure is given asbeingthe ideal structure
and the development of the figure, of the schema, in its spatial nature is given as
strictly identical with the development of the idea. One can see the danger; a slight
preference is enough, it is enough to momentarily consider the spatial relations of the
schema for themselves and to let them be affirmed or modified in accordance with
the laws proper to spatiality [since all images, he insists, are spatial in character]: the
thought is irremediably warped, we no longer follow the idea directly, we think by
analogy.
(Imaginary 117 )
This evokes the warning: “It appears to me that this insensible degrad-
ation of thought is one of the most frequent causes of error, particularly
in philosophy and psychology” (Imaginary 117 ). In other words, the
error comes from refusing to understand the image as a consciousness
distinct from and heterogeneous to the perceptual and conceptual
consciousness.
Concluding this third part of his study, Sartre suggests lines of further
experimentation and the methods that might fruitfully foster it.
Regarding the problem of why perception includes more and otherwise
than what we see, for instance, he suggests that we would advance in its
(^32) SeeBN 435 – 347 ;EN 510 – 511. See Fell,Emotion in the Thought of Sartre, 84 , and Mary
Warnock,The Philosophy of Sartre(New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967 ), 114 , where it is
remarked that Sartre does not distinguish between cause and motive. But he clearly distin-
guishesmotif(reason) andmobile(motive); seeBN 445 – 446 ;EN 522. And, as Fell points out,
Sartre never uses the Frenchcauseto refer to conscious activities. I discuss this in a lengthy
note inSartre and Marxist Existentialism(University of Chicago Press, 1984 ), 211 – 212 ,n. 16 ;
hereafterSME.
The Imaginary 121