5
Consciousness as imagination
The Imaginary
In many respects this book summarizes and expands the arguments and
applications of the previous two. As such, it is the apex of Sartre’s
phenomenological psychology. If one excludes his increasingly extended
studies in “existential psychoanalysis,” never again will he treat a major
issue in psychology at such length or in such depth. In the “Philosoph-
ical Introduction” to his excellent translation ofL’Imaginaire, Jonathan
Webber judges it “the most sustained and detailed account of the nature
of imagination in Western philosophical literature.”^1 In view of Sartre’s
attention to imaging consciousness heretofore, it can be read as a
compendium of his early philosophy and a gateway to the properly
“ontological” phase of his concerns inBeing and Nothingness. He alludes
to that “existential” opening when he claims that “imagination is...the
whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom” (Ire 186 ). In this sense,
it also previews his multivolume study of Flaubert’s life and time, which
he once described as its sequel.^2
(^1) Imaginaryxiii.
(^2) “As it now stands, the book [The Family Idiot] is connected in a certain way withThe
Imaginary(L’Imaginaire) which I wrote before the war” (Sitx: 101 ;L/S 119 , where it is
mistranslated asImagination). But he goes on to justify his claim elsewhere thatThe Family
Idiotwas a sequel toSearch for a Method(seeThe Family Idiot, trans. Carol Cosman, 5 vols.
[University of Chicago Press, 1981 – 1993 ],i:ix; hereafterFI) when he continues the above
quotation: “But what I tried to do with theFlaubertis also to use the methods of historical
materialism, so that when I speak of words I am referring to their materiality. I consider
speaking a material fact as is thinking” (Sitx: 101 – 102 ;L/S 119 ). These claims of precedence
are not mutually exclusive, as our study ofSearch for a MethodinChapter 12 will reveal.
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