Conclusion: the Sartrean

imaginary, chastened but

indomitable

W

ith a similethat could be read as the summation of his philo-
sophic anthropology, Sartre remarks late in his career: “Man is
like a leak of gas slipping into the imaginary” (BEM 46 ). We have
witnessed this slippage in its various occurrences throughout his career.
Describing the arguments that often arose between Sartre and Aron as
young adults, for instance, Simone de Beauvoir noted how aggressively
analytic was Aron’s approach: “‘There are two alternatives,mon petit
comarade,’ he would say. ‘Take your choice’...Sartre struggled hard to
avoid being cornered, but as there was more imagination than logic in his
mental processes, he had his work cut out” (Prime 33 ). Of course,
Sartre’s imagination was never “free-floating.”^1 It always built on a
perceptual core that it could “derealize” as he saw fit. His existential
biographies confirm this tension between the imaginary and the real –
the “novel which is true.”
Michel Sicard observed that “one can never emphasize sufficiently
how Sartre’s first philosophy is grounded in a theory of the image.”^2
That theory, we have argued, found a ready home in the “eidetic”

(^1) His relation to the surrealists in the 1920 s and 1930 s was tangential and after the war it
became quite critical inWhat is Literature?(see William Plank,Sartre and Surrealism[Ann
Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International Research Press, 1981 ]). On the other hand,
the world Roquentin presented inNauseais “peopled with images in the style of Dali,”
2 Dictionnaire Sartre, ed. Noudlemann and Philippe, s.v. “Surre ́alisme.”
Michel Sicard, “Laoulere ́el fulgure: matie ́risme et immate ́rialite ́dans l’esthe ́tique sartri-
enne,” inLectures 73. Sicard is the author of several interviews with Sartre and numerous
essays on his aesthetics, such asEssais sur Sartre. Entretiens avec Sartre(Paris: E ́ditions
Galile ́e, 1989 ).
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