reduction (free, imagination variation of examples) central to the
descriptive method of phenomenology. And when conjoined with the
phenomenological concept of intentionality, it saved him from the “illu-
sion of immanence,” with its thesis that the image is a mental likeness of
an extramental phenomenon. Rather, for Sartre, intentionality effects a
“re-presentation” of the “presence” of Chavalier in an impersonation,
for example, or the Renaissance in viewing Michelangelo’s “David,” or
the living thing by simply regarding a tree in its physical reality.^3 In other
words, intentionality is Sartre’s antidote against idealist epistemology
and aesthetics.
Sicard perceptively extends this value concept of “presence” to
the historical concept of “incarnation” and its cognates that we have
encountered throughout Sartre’s later work: “sens,” “personalization”
and “singular universal.”^4 They transmuted from the phenomenological
to the dialectical as Sartre shifted his basic methodological concepts from
consciousness to praxis and the lived (le ve ́cu). But in the process, we
witnessed a certain “clouding” of the translucency that marked Sartrean
consciousness at the outset. If not a full surrender of his opposition
to the unconscious, it certainly suggested a weakening of his early
rejection of that idea.
Sartre’s political commitments moved steadily leftward, crossing the
positions of Aron, Camus and Merleau-Ponty along the way. This too
was a function of his loyalty to the ideals of “Socialism and Freedom,” as
he envisioned them. He admitted this proclivity in his final interview
with Beauvoir before his death: “I invented mythical societies: good
societies in which one ought to live. It was the non-real (non-re ́el) that
became the meaning (sens) of my politics; it is [for] something like that
that I entered into the political (la politique)” (Ce ́r 479 ). And when asked
in another interview “whether, in some sense, lived experience (le ve ́cu)
would be a kind of imaginary,” Sartre quickly replied “Exactly”
(Schilpp 23 ).
(^3) “Venice is present in each canvas [of Guardi]...as it has been experienced by everyone and
seen by no one,” Jean-Paul Sartre, “The Underprivileged Painter: Lapoujade,”Essays in
Aesthetics, trans. Wade Baskin (New York: Washington Square Press, 1966 ), 105 – 106. On the
4 relation betweensens(meaning) andpresencein Sartre’s aesthetic, seeChapter^6 above.
SeeSFHRii: 160 – 166 where “incarnation” is discussed both in aesthetics and in the
anthropology of the second volume of theCritique.
410 Conclusion