4

First triumph: The Imagination

S

artre is a philosopherof the imaginary. In an interview late in
life, he admitted: “I believe the greatest difficulty [encountered in
my research for my Flaubert study] was introducing the idea of the
imaginary as the central determining factor in a person.”^1 If one takes
“imaginary” in the broad sense we have been using it, namely, as the
locus of possibility, negativity and lack, articulated in creative freedom,
this can be taken for an autobiographical remark as well. The tension
between creative literature and philosophy, between image and concept,
that he experienced as a lyce ́e student was symptomatic of this basic
feature of his thought. But that tension abated, though it did not
disappear, when he turned his philosophical attention to the imagination
and his literary undertakings to philosophical themes, as we noticed in
Chapter 2. Recall Sartre’s remark that at this early stage he scarcely
distinguished between psychology and philosophy.^2 Though noted for
his absence from classes at the Sorbonne, Sartre joined Nizan, Aron and

(^1) Interview with Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka, published inLe Monde,May 14 , 1971 ,
reprinted inL/S 119 substituting “imaginary” for “imagination.”
(^2) “In my mind, philosophy ultimately meant psychology. I got rid of that conception later”
(Schilpp, “Interview with Jean-Paul Sartre,” 8 ). Philosophical psychology had long been a
division of philosophy in general. As Arlette Elkaı ̈m-Sartre points out, “French school
students were introduced to the four classical fields of philosophy: general psychology (later
called ‘theoretical psychology’), metaphysics, morals and logic. Imagination belonged to the
area of psychology that Sartre taught his pupils, along with perception, memory, attention,
the association of ideas, the emotions, etc.” She quotes an official handbook of psychology
defining psychology as the “positive science of psychic facts and the laws governing them,”
but cautions that “factsas Sartre understands them [inThe Imaginary] and consequentlylaws,
will not have the same meaning as in [that handbook]” (The Imaginary, Historical
Introduction, vii).
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