for the logical forms of negation (doubt, restriction, etc.) as for its affective
and active forms (prohibition, consciousness of impotence, lack, etc.)...
There can be no realizing consciousness,” he assures us, “without imaging
consciousness, and vice versa. Thus imagination...is disclosed as an
essential and transcendental condition of consciousness. It is as absurd to
conceive of a consciousness that does not imagine as it is to conceive of a
consciousness that cannot effect thecogito”(Imaginary 188 ). We must
concludethat imaging consciousness is the locus of negativity,possibility and
lack– features that Sartre will attribute to consciousness in general inBeing
and Nothingness. The imagination has reached its high point in Sartre’s
philosophy. Henceforth, there will be a gradual reduction of its explicit role
in his thought until we encounter itin extremisin the replay of the imaginary
and the real in the life and work of Gustave Flaubert.
“The Work of Art”If the previous part of this conclusion forms an interlude, indicating a
reading of Heidegger’s masterwork, this part is more a resumption of
Sartre’s earlier application of his theory of the imagination, the analogon
and the rest, to the work of art.
It is common to distinguish the aesthetic object from the physical artifact.
We observed Sartre respect this distinction in his discussion of the portrait
of Charles VIII. The physical object, the painted canvas, for example,
functions as an analogon when viewed aesthetically. Sartre’s approach to
the work of art relies heavily on the Husserlian theory of intentionality and
especially on his theory of imaging consciousness. This issues in his initial
“principle”: the work of art is an irreality. The aesthetic object, Charles VIII,
“appears the moment that consciousness, effecting a radical conversion that
requires the nihilation of the world, constitutes itself as imaging” (Imaginary
189 ). The depicted Charles VIII is simply the necessary correlate of the
intentional act of an imaging consciousness. Insofar as the artifact is intended
imaginatively, it serves as an analogon for the aesthetic object. We are familiar
with this feature of Sartre’s theory and will encounter it often in his analyses
of artworks throughout his career.^42
(^42) Sartre has adapted the problematic concept of “hyle ́” (stuff, matter) from Husserl’s phe-
nomenology to his “analogon,” with the possibilities as well as the limits that this trans-
formation entails. Both terms are heir to the ancient Aristotelian metaphysics of matter/
134 Consciousness as imagination