an irreal world. The dream is a privileged experience that can help us to
conceive what a consciousness would be like that had lost its “being-in-
the-world” and had, at the same time, been deprived of the category of
the real” (Imaginary 175 ).
Conclusion
Let us bring to a close our discussion ofThe Imaginaryand this chapter
with some thoughts on Sartre’s concluding reflections on his seminal
study. If he published nothing ofThe Psychebut his little book on the
emotions because he considered the rest too Husserlian and unoriginal,
the Heideggerian presence in the conclusion toThe Imaginaryis evident.
For the first time in this text, he speaks of “human reality,” the French
translation of Heidegger’sDasein, which we have already noted in the
previous chapter. And we observed him adopting Heidegger’s “Being-
in-the-world” as a basic category and repeating Heidegger’s insistence
that every image must be constituted on “the ground of the world.”
Sartre mentions in hisWar Diariesthat he readSein und Zeitin April
1939 , and it is not surprising that this major work cast its shadow over
the later portions of the book, most notably the first section of its
conclusion, entitled “Consciousness and Imagination.”^37
“Consciousness and Imagination”In the particularly revealing initial paragraph, Sartre raises what he takes
to be the metaphysical question haunting the entire book: “What are the
characteristics that can be attributed to consciousness on the basis of the
fact that it is consciousness capable of imagining?” While conceding that
the question could be posed from the Kantian perspective that would be
better understood by his contemporaries, namely, what must conscious-
ness in general be if it is true that the constitution of an image is always
possible, Sartre insists that “the deepest sense of the problem can be
grasped only from a phenomenological point of view” (Imaginary 179 ).
(^37) Though Sartre had already read several of Heidegger’s shorter works before 1939 , it is likely
that his recent reading ofSein und Zeitalso left its mark onEmotions, published in December
of 1939.
Conclusion 129