Kantian “regressive” argument as failing to address the concrete,
“existential” character of the imaging act.^41
Revealing that Sartre has been reading Heidegger’s major text in his own
manner, he now asks in telescopic fashion: “Is not the very first condition of
thecogitodoubt, which is to say the constitution of the real as a world at the
same time as its nihilation from this same point of view, and does not the
reflective grasp of doubt as doubt coincide with the apodictic intuition of
freedom?” (Imaginary 186 ). He concludes that imagination is thus not an
empirical power added to consciousness, but is “the whole of consciousness
as it realizes its freedom.” In sum, “it is because we are transcendentally
free that we can imagine” (Imaginary 186 ). But he reverses the relationship
and extends the claim: “The nihilating function belonging to conscious-
ness – which Heidegger callssurpassing–can be manifested only in an imaging
act”(Imaginary 186 – 187 , emphasis added).
Sartre is marshaling his earlier remarks on nothingness, throughout these
three psychological studies and even from his earlier works, to undertake a
creative dialogue with the Heidegger ofBeing and Time.NotthatHeidegger
inspired the idea – we have noted its presence at work even before Sartre’s
“Berlin vacation” – but that German masterwork certainly challenged an
equivalent response, the initial elements of which are sketched in this portion
of Sartre’s concluding remarks. We glimpse what will be a basic claim of
Being and Nothingness, namely, that human reality is being-in-situation; that
“situation” is an ambiguous relation of facticity (the real world) and
transcendence (the surpassing of that real toward the irreal or imaginary).
So the imaginary is that concrete “something” towards which the
existent is surpassed. As soon as a person apprehends his or her exist-
ence as “in-situation,” Sartre is claiming, they surpass it toward that in
relation to which the person existsas lack– their possibilities: goals,
values, as ifs. But the locus of that lack is the imaginary. In effect, “The
imaginary represents at each moment the implicit sense (sens[meaning/
direction]) of the real” (Imaginary 188 ;F 360 ).
Continuing this quasi-apotheosis of the imaginary, Sartre urges that “the
object of a negation must be posited as imaginary,” adding that “this is true
(^41) It is worth noting that a similar inadequacy of the regressive method in hisQuestion of Method
years later will lead him to complement it with a “progressive” movement that concretized the
abstract premises arrived at by the regressive method. But by then praxis has supplanted
consciousness and dialectic is in full force (see the first chapter ofQuestion of Method).
Conclusion 133