the noetic consciousness; identically, they are mutually referential.’”^21
But Sartre reads this as sliding Husserl back into the “classical” problem
of failing to respect the essential difference between image and percep-
tion, for it leaves the noema of the tree, for example, with the same ideal
existence as that of the centaur.
And whence comes the distinction between images and perceptions?
On Sartre’s reading of Husserl, the difference arises solely from the
respective noetic acts that constitute them. And this is what leads him
to question whether the noema as an “ideal” entity is purely passive,
whether it can be animated at will by any noesis whatsoever, again
seemingly like Aristotle’s “prime matter.”
Whether his understanding of Husserl’s theory is accurate or not, and
Sartre admits that it may not be,^22 this is our first encounter with a
problem that will plague Sartre’s thought under different formulations
for the rest of his life: the problem of distinguishing between the “given”
and the “taken” in our conscious life. InBeing and Nothingnessit will
recur as the relation between “facticity” and “transcendence” in our
situational existence, and in theCritiqueit appears as the ambiguous
relation between praxis and the practico-inert, whereas it insinuates itself
ethically in his inability to reconcile “fraternity” and “violence” in his
later writings.^23
To illustrate the point, Sartre cites Husserl’s well-known example of
Du ̈rer’s engravingKnight, Death and the Devil. The set can be perceived
as physical marks on a piece of paper. But imaging consciousness will
intend the objects imaginativelyas“Knight,” “Death,” and “Devil.”
Our consciousness may assume an “aesthetic” manner of intending these
figures, in which case it “neutralizes” its attitude toward these figures,
intending them in a “disinterested” manner, as Kant said in hisCritique
of Judgment. Sartre’s point is that the matter (hyle ́) alone would not
suffice to distinguish image from perception, since it can be the same for
both, as in the case of the physical drawing of the knight and the mental
image of the knight. We should note that Sartre inThe Imaginarywill
(^21) Ion 154. SeeIdeas 241.
(^22) “We are presenting in a very rough manner (tres grossierement) a very nuanced theory, but one
23 whose details do not concern us directly” (Ion^153 n.).
These are obviously quite distinct matters, but their functional similarity should be kept in
mind as we move through the stages of Sartre’s intellectual development.
The Imagination 91