the classical understanding – or he must make them both active at the
expense of his concept of “presentification” (as explained in hisLectures
on Internal Time Consciousness).^25 So we are again faced with the question
whether the distinction between mental image and perception is solely a
function of alternative intentions. Sartre’s thesis is that such intentions
are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for their respective out-
comes. He believes that mental image and perception must differ with
respect to hyle ́as well, and he suggests the possibility that “the stuff ”
(matie`re) of the mental image may itself be spontaneous, “though a
spontaneity of a lesser type” (Ion 158 ). He concedes that his inquiry
into the proper “hyle ́” of the mental image may require that he leave the
domain of eidetic psychology and return to inductive reasoning, but he
believes that Husserl has saved us from the errors and inadequacies of
philosophical psychology as set forth in this small volume.^26
What makes this a promising interpretation for Sartre, if not for
Husserl, is that the aesthetic object, in the theory Sartre will fashion in
The Imaginary, makes use of the physical object such as the statue, the
painting, the performance of the music and the physical inscription or
verbal utterance of the written or spoken narrative – to each of which he
ascribes the status ofanalogonwhen it is perceived in the aesthetic mode.
In other words, Sartre is fashioning a powerful tool out of the epistemo-
logically questionable concept of the “stuff ” in Husserl’s phenomenology.
An unfortunate foray into experimental psychology
We just noted Sartre proposing a possible “return to inductive
reasoning.” He may have had a particular “experiment/experience” in
mind when he made that observation. In the course of his criticism of
psychological theories of the image, Sartre referred to “the interesting
(^25) Edmund Husserl,Lectures on Internal Time Consciousness, trans. James S. Churchill
26 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,^1964 ).
For a discussion of Sartre’s ambiguity regarding the “hyle ́,” see M. M. Saraiva,L’Imagin-
ation selon Husserl(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970 ), 134 , n. Note Sartre’s distinction
between “eidetic psychology” and “inductive reasoning.” They differ as do “essence” and
“fact,” so sharply differentiated by Husserl. Whether “eidetic psychology” necessarily
requires a “transcendental reduction” is being worked out in Sartre’s next two studies. It
finds its culmination in the “phenomenological ontology” ofBeing and Nothingness. See
Embree,Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, 278 b.
An unfortunate foray into experimental psychology 93