In the final analysis, Sartre insists, the problem is the incompatibility
of Bergson’s biologistic psychology with his spiritualist metaphysics.
The latter, Sartre concedes, does indeed distinguish essentially between
image and perception whereas Bergson’s psychology, despite his claims,
is shown to allow for only a difference of degree as do Hume and the
empiricists with whom Bergson is taking issue (Ion 57 ).^14
Sartre ends this chapter with a criticism of “Bergsonians,” who apply
a modified version of Bergson’s thought to the problem of the image–
perception relation. He insists that this merely underscores the inad-
equacies of the Bergsonian metaphysics and the psychology it engenders.
But it is worth recalling here Sartre’s Kantian respect for “schemas”
that he had exhibited in his positive reference to a major essay by
psychologist Auguste Fach in his DES thesis.^15 While admitting that
an interest in schemata is hardly limited to Bergsonians, Sartre now sees
these schemata as playing an intermediary role between the “pure
sensible individual and pure thought” (Ion 66 ) that finds a welcome
home in Bergson’s approach. But displaying his major concern and the
motive that led him to phenomenology in the first place, Sartre asks:
“This relaxing of the image, creation of the schema, does it signify
progress toward the concrete?” He responds with a resounding no. It’s
just another version of the associationist error, rendered more dangerous
by its seeming advance. The Bergsonian image retains its thinglike
character, its inertia, and as such is just another “thing” in consciousness
to be observed and deciphered: “In a word, itteachesus something at
every moment” just like a sensation (Ion 69 , emphasis his). This last
remark might seem superfluous were it not for the fact that it denies a
(^14) In his chiefly laudatory review ofL’ImaginationinJournal de Psychologie Normale et
Pathologique 33 , nos. 9 – 10 (Nov.–Dec. 1936 ), Sartre’s friend and fellow Normalien,
Merleau-Ponty observes that Sartre is unfair in his critique of Bergson on images: “you
can find a more profound meaning of ‘images’ in [Bergson’s]Matter and Memorythan Sartre
allows. One can read Bergson’s account of world as an ensemble of ‘images’ as suggesting
that the ‘thing’ should not be resolved into ‘states of consciousness’ nor [lie] hidden in a
substantial reality beyond our perception. Phrased more precisely, this would be an antici-
pation of Husserliannoema.” Moreover, Merleau-Ponty chides Sartre for his severity in
rejecting the matter–form distinction applied by psychologists to images while readily
adopting Husserl’s much disputed distinction between “hyle ́” (matter) and “morphe ́” (form),
15 p.^761.
Auguste Flach, “U ̈ber symbolische Schemata in produktiven Denkenprozesses,”Archiv fu ̈r
die gesamte Psychologie 52 ( 1925 ): 369 – 441. Much of this analysis is drawn fromPPS 75 ff.
The Imagination 85