“Conduct in the Face of the Irreal”
Sartre’s previous treatment of emotional consciousness should temper
any lingering Cartesian inclinations in his discussion of the psycho-
logical. So he now distinguishes two layers of a complete imaging
attitude to account for our “real” reactions to irreal objects: the primary
or constituent and the secondary or “reactive” layers. The former
denotes the real elements that, in consciousness, exactly correspond to
the irreal objects. These include “intentions, movements, feelings, pieces
of knowledge that represent our more or less spontaneous reactions to
the irreal. [They] are notfree; they obey a directing form, a primary
intention and are absorbed in the constitution of the irreal object.” As
examples of such, Sartre mentions vomiting, nausea, reflexes of ocular
convergence as well as our experiences of fright or joy, or of physical
arousal at erotic images. It is improper to list them as “reactions” to
images, he insists, since they are ingredients in that very image itself.
Reactions to the imaged object on the secondary layer, he points out,
are properly so called because their object is the irreal object as remem-
bered, for example, but not constituted as such. Sartre believes that
memory can confuse or conflate the imagined and the perceived objects
since both share the quality of pastness as remembered. He refuses to
distinguish image and perception in terms of relative “vivacity,” as do
Hume and the associationists. An irreal object cannot have force since it
does not act. As he remarks: “the irreal always receives and never gives”;
again, it teaches us nothing.
As his careful phenomenological description and analysis of our “reac-
tions” to images continues, Sartre examines the way feelings can “pass
though” the imaging state, in a reciprocal movement of consciousness
that, while remaining spontaneous, is subordinate to the development of
its real correlate. “Each affective quality is so deeply incorporated in the
object that it is impossible to distinguish between what is felt and what is
perceived” (Imaginary 139 ).^34 It is in this context that Sartre speaks of a
kind of “affective dialectic.” But he warns that, unlike the relation to an
object in perception, experience of the irreal object involves a certain
sense of freedom just mentioned, as well as a “quality ofnothingness
(ne ́ant) that characterizes the whole process” (Imaginary 140 ).
(^34) Consider the fearful quality of the Japanese mask to which Sartre referred in his essay on
intentionality in Husserl (see above,Chapter 2 ).
124 Consciousness as imagination