solution if we would “once and for all, renounce that being of reason that
is pure sensation” (Imaginary 121 ). Among these lines and methods are
the work of the Berlin (which Sartre calls the Wu ̈rzburg) school of
Gestalt psychologists: Ko ̈hler, Wertheimer, and Koffka, much favored
by phenomenologists. It is worth noting that Aron Gurwitsch, who had
lectured on Gestalt psychology at the Sorbonne in the 1930 s, and
Sartre’s friend Merleau-Ponty were pursuing such lines of research at
about the time thatThe Imaginarywas being written, though neither is
cited in this work.^33
“Part IV: The Imaginary Life”Having reflected on the role of the image as symbol in relation to the two
other functions of our psychological life, namely perception and concep-
tualization, Sartre is ready to examine that realm of the “irreal” that he
calls our imaginary life. This includes pathologies of the imagination
such as hallucination and our normal dream states as well as our aesthetic
experiences, which will continue to figure in his subsequent writings on
the fine arts.The Imaginarycontinues to make its presence felt in many
of his subsequent works, and not only in those that deal explicitly with
art criticism. We shall discover clones of the “derealizing” function
entering into consciousness itself under the rubric of “nihilation” (ne ́an-
tisation)inBeing and Nothingness, for example, and in the various
“choices” of the imaginary on the part of those literary figures whose
“biographies” he examines at increasing length. In one way or another,
these are glosses on the reflections enunciated in the chapters of this
book, especially its remarks on the imaginary “life.”
As an introduction to that life, Sartre reminds us that “generally, it is
not only the very matter of the object that is irreal: all the spatial and
temporal determinations to which it is subjected participate in this
irreality” (Imaginary 127 ). Clearly, the space of the image is not that of
perception. But the time? It would seem that our conscious life, whether
(^33) Merleau-Ponty’s first major philosophical work,The Structure of Behavior, was written in
1938 but not published until 1942. Aron Gurwitsch, who developed a “Gestalt Phenomen-
ology” and studied with Husserl, should not be confused with Georges Gurvitch, whose
lectures on recent German Philosophy were mentioned inChapter 2 above. Both men had
lectured at the Sorbonne.
122 Consciousness as imagination