Imagining Versus Perceiving

Sartre's analysis of imagination leads us towards the core of his thought. Imagination is a constant term in his conceptual scheme – to escape into it, his constant temptation. Moreover, Sartre's view of the real world is inseparable from his view of the imaginary. They are described in opposing and dialectically connected terms, and appear as such in almost every major early work: in L'Imagination and in the story La Chambre, in L'Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions and in La Nausée. My intention here is to examine Sartre's early analysis of imagination: to determine precisely what it argues, to show how his general world-view insinuates itself into his discussion, and so to illuminate the intellectual perspectives of L'Etre et le Néant and, later, of his encounter with Marxism and calls for an engaged literature.

Unexamined Presuppositions

L'Imagination (1936) and L'Imaginaire (1939) are more concrete in analysis, and more restricted in scope, than Sartre's best-known philosophical works – L'Etre et le Néant or the Critique de la raison dialectique. Written under the direct impact of phenomenology, their common topic is the imagination. What is the typical experience of imagining? Before the observing subject lies a sheet of paper. It is there, it waits; one need only look to see it. Then the subject looks away, at the wall, and imagines the vanished object. It now appears again, but not in fact, not as an object. This time it is seen as an image, an image which is immediately known not to be the real sheet of paper.

Any theory that seeks to explain the process of imagining must stay close to this experience, describing it faithfully. Yet, according to Sartre, writers on the imagination had not done this: 'all have built a

priori their theories of the image. And when finally they took to consulting experience, it was too late. Instead of allowing themselves to be guided by experience, they have forced experience to answer yes or no to leading questions.'¹

Among those so indicted were Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, Bergson, Taine and Spaier. All began with the naive assumption that the mind, where it encountered the external world, was one object among others. Images, which were 'in' the mind, were the perceptual residues of objects outside it. The image was supposed to have the same traits as the actual object itself: it was a thing-image, regarded as obeying the same laws, and as entering experience in the same way. Perception was passive, obedient to the mechanical laws of association and so too was imagination. In inquiring whether he perceived or dreamt, Descartes set out the problem for the next three centuries: the image was treated as a thing in the brain, left there by the physical effect of an external object. Imagination became a type of perception, distinguishable from ordinary perception of objects only afterwards. Followed out consistently, as it was by Hume, this approach completely subjected the mind to the laws of association. When the mind was presented with an image, this theory claimed, it operated as it did before any object confronting it, obediently perceiving what had been given to it. Thus it was necessary to ask, as did Descartes, whether we were dreaming or not – or, with Spaier nearly three centuries later, whether we were imagining or not. For Spaier 'the index of truth remains external to the representation itself, for comparison determines whether or not it should be incorporated into the grouping "reality ".'² Images were distinguished from perceptions only by the introduction of 'an infinite system of references'. But this protracted analysis meant that our moment-to-moment judgments could never be more than probable. Every moment was rendered uncertain, an unverified pretension, a possible hallucination.³

For Sartre, the implications of this position constituted an obvious outrage to immediate experience. In fact, he argued, Spaier's problem was a false one: 'I am seated, writing, and see the things around me. Suddenly I form an image of my friend Peter. All the theories in the world are helpless against the fact that I knew, at the very instant

1. i, p.6; ipc, p.5.

2. i, p.102; ipc, p.95 (translation changed).

3. See i, p.104; ipc, p.96.

Imagining Versus Perceiving 39

of the appearance of the image, that it was an image.'⁴ Why was it necessary to undergo countless investigations in order to distinguish an image from a perception? We do so quite spontaneously. We know at every moment that we are imagining, in spite of the nonsensical claims of Hume, Taine, and Spaier. Thus, there was a basic, 'pre-predicative' difference between imagination and perception, rather than an initial identification. For Sartre, experience was an 'unimpeachable given' from which analysis should properly begin.

The thing-image theory distorted experience in a second way. For how could we think with those inert, passively received sense-data filling our heads? So long as the image was said to be a revised sense-perception, its appearance in consciousness must be governed by the physiological determinism regulating all such contents. The mechanical laws governing the external world would also govern consciousness, destroying thought as we know it. 'Thought, in short, could not function as the guiding theme around which images would be organized, as tools, as approximations. Thought would be strictly reduced to the sole function of grasping relationships between two sorts of objects: thing-objects and image-objects.'⁵ For Hume, who followed this through consistently, consciousness was, therefore, a collection of inert objects moved about by mysterious and blind forces over which we have no control. The disturbing, yet entirely logical, outcome of the thing-image theory was stated by Sartre's former teacher, Alain: 'we do not think as we wish.'⁶

This was indeed consistent; but, Sartre insisted, it was not what really happened: for 'in such thought, bumping along and splintering, transfixed in all its processes by ever fresh appearances without logical inter-relations, who would recognize the faculty of reasoning, conceiving, devising machines, undertaking mental experiments?'⁷ Against such patently wayward theorizing, Sartre affirmed the freedom and creativity of human thought.

The Image Described

What, then, was the reality of the image? Once we 'rid ourselves of the illusion of immanence' – of the illusion that the imagined sheet of

4. i, p.103; ipc, p.96.

5. i, pp.ll6-17; ipc, p.107 (translation changed).

6. i, p.117; ipc, p.108.

7. i, p.l17; ipc, p.108.

paper had somehow entered the mind – the undeniable fact became manifest: if nothing was in consciousness, then its object must be outside, in the world. This was as true for imagining as for perceiving. 'In fact, whether I perceive or imagine that chair of straw on which I am seated, it always remains outside of consciousness. In both cases it is there, in space, in that room, in front of that desk. Now – and this is what reflection teaches us above all – whether I see or imagine that chair, the object of my perception and that of my image are identical: it is that chair of straw on which I am seated? Reflection taught a simple but central fact: that consciousness aimed at things beyond it, directed itself outwards. Consciousness was not self-enclosed: it was intentional. But if consciousness was typically directed outwards, what distinguished imagining from perceiving? It was simply that 'in one of the cases, the chair is "encountered" by consciousness, in the other it is not? In each case one tried to see the chair: when the chair was not actually present to perception one created an image. How, Sartre continued, were objects perceived? Never wholly and at a stroke: objects appeared 'only in a series of profiles, of projections'. To perceive, it was necessary to 'make a tour' of the object, to 'serve an apprenticeship'. 'The object itself is the synthesis of all these appearances. The perception of an object is thus a phenomenon of an infinity of aspects.'~̊ Thus, a cube, for example, was never seen as a cube. Three of its sides would always remain hidden, its angles appear distorted, and so on. To perceive it was to 'learn' it, so as to hold in mind each profile as it was turned in the hand, mentally composing these separate impressions into a whole cube.

The process of thinking about the cube was quite different: 'I think of its six sides and its eight angles all at once; I think that its angles are right angles, its sides squared. I am at the centre of my idea, I seize it in its entirety at one glance.'¹¹ And in imagining too, 'the cube as image is presented immediately for what it is.'¹² Furthermore, 'the very act that gives me the object as an image includes the knowledge of what it is.'¹³ It followed, then, that the image was poorer – pos-

8. L'Imaginaire : Psychologie phénoménologique de l'imagination (ip), Paris 1940, pp. 16-17; Psychology of Imagination (pi), New York 1948, p.7.

9. ip, p.17; pi, p.7.

10. ip, p.18; pi, p.9.

11. ip, p. 19; pi, pp.9-10 (translation changed).

12. ip, p.19; pi, p.10.

13. ip, p.21; pi, p.12.

Imagining Versus Perceiving 41

sessed fewer attributes – than the object. 'In the world of perception every "thing " has an infinite number of relationships to other things. And what is more, it is this infinity of relationships – as well as the infinite number of relationships between the elements of the thing – which constitutes the very essence of a thing.'¹⁴ Things 'brim over', they 'overflow' consciousness, constantly revealing new aspects. On the other hand, the image contained only such aspects and relationships as the subject chose to grant it. 'We must not say the other relationships exist in secret, that they wait for a bright searchlight to be directed upon them. No: they do not exist at all.'¹⁵ The creator of the image has absolutely nothing to learn about it. Its 'sensible opacity' notwithstanding, the image really 'teaches nothing, never produces an impression of novelty, and never reveals any new aspect of the subject. It delivers it in a lump. No risk, no anticipation: only a certainty.'¹⁶ Imagination, Sartre continued, was negative and primitive in character. The act of imagining 'can assume four forms and no more: it can posit the object as non-existent, or as absent, or as existing elsewhere; it can also "neutralize" itself, that is, not posit its object as existing.'¹⁷ In any case, the image was not the object. The missing object, seen 'in image', was known with certainty to be missing, and its image as unreal. The image presented its object as absent, and itself, therefore, as only an image. At the heart of the experience of imagining was negativity, known and accepted as such from the outset.¹⁸ Thus, for Sartre the traditional problem of Cartesian psychology simply did not exist. There could be no uncertainty concerning the status of a mental act whose conditions, modalities and results were known and accepted in advance.

The image was an act; it was a quasi-observation; and it presented its object as a nothingness. Its fourth trait was creativity. 'A perceptual consciousness appears to itself as being passive.'¹⁹ But imagination was 'spontaneous and creative; it maintains and sustains the sensible qualities of its object by a continuous creation. In perception the actual representative element corresponds to a passivity of consciousness. In the image, this element, in what it has of the primary and incom-

14. ip, p.20; pi, p.11.

15. ip, p.20; pi, p.11.

16. ip, p.21; pi, p.13.

17. ip, p.24; pi, p.16.

18. See, for example, ip, p.25; pi, pp.17-18.

19. ip, p.26; pi, p.18.

municable, is the product of a conscious activity, is shot through and through with a flow of creative will.'²⁰

There are many different kinds of image, and Sartre went on to describe these in a careful account of 'the image family' that ranged from the photograph at one extreme to the wholly mental image at the other, including also caricatures, signs, impersonations, schematic drawings and hypnagogic images. In every case, he argued, consciousness aimed at an object outside itself, was spontaneous, presented its object as not being present, and filled that object with its own pre-given knowledge. In every case, consciousness turned away from a realistic posture towards the world and created unreal objects. What differed from one form of imagining to the next was the nature and, so to speak, the quantity of the perceptual material – the analogue – present to consciousness. Moving from photograph to mental image, Sartre showed at each stage how, as more of the perceptual analogue dropped out, knowledge and spontaneity became more important, how, as the role of the analogue diminished, the role of consciousness – of outer-directed, intentional creativity – became more prominent.

Evaluating Sartre's Account

The main charge levelled in Sartre's historical critique of psychology was that theorists of imagination had consistently failed to examine, if not actively pre-judged, the data of experience. His second work on the subject, L'Imaginaire, embodied his own attempt to correct this longstanding failure by providing a meticulous rendering and analysis of the experience of imagining. Yet in the earlier L'Imagination, Sartre had already cast doubt upon his capacity for 'unprejudiced self-examination', at the outset making a major ontological statement: 'Never could my consciousness be a thing, because its way of being in itself is precisely to be for itself; for consciousness, to exist is to be conscious of its existence. It appears as a pure spontaneity, confronting a world of things which is sheer inertness. From the start, therefore, we may posit two types of existence. For it is indeed just insofar as things are inert that they escape the sway of consciousness; their inertness is their safeguard, the preserver of their autonomy.'²¹ In this statement,

20. ip, p.27; pi, p.20 (emphasis added).

21. ip, pp.l-2; pi, pp.l-2.

Imagining Versus Perceiving 43

contrary to his own first principle of analytic procedure, Sartre gave his own a priori account of what experience must be – and, as a later passage made plain, a glimpse of the general outlook that underlay his phenomenology of imagination: 'In the external world are inert objects which I can take hold of, move about, remove from a drawer or put back. We seem to be able to conceive an activity which operates on passive givens. But the mistake is easily detected. If I can pick up this book or that cup, it is insofar as I am an organism, a body also subject to the laws of inertia. The mere fact that I can oppose my thumb to my four fingers in a clutching gesture already presupposes the whole of mechanics. Here is only the appearance of activity. Hence it is impossible to assign to thought an evoking power over inert contents without at once materializing thought . . . That exists spontaneously which determines its own existence. In other words, to exist spontaneously is to exist for oneself and through oneself (éxister pour soi et par soi). One reality alone deserves to be called "spontaneous": consciousness. To exist and to be conscious of existing are one and the same for consciousness. Otherwise stated, the supreme ontological law of consciousness is as follows: for a consciousness the only way of existing is to be conscious that it exists. It is therefore evident that consciousness can determine itself to exist, but that it cannot act on anything but itself. A sensory content may be the occasion for our forming a consciousness, but we cannot act by means of consciousness on the sensory content, dragging it from nowhere (or from the unconscious), or sending it back. If the image is a form of consciousness it is pure spontaneity, self-conscious so to speak, transparent to itself, and it exists only to the degree that it knows itself. It is not sensory content. It is perfectly futile to represent it as "rationalized ", as "permeated by thought". There is no middle ground: either it is wholly thought, and one thinks by means of the image, or it is sensory content and one would think on the occasion of an image. In the latter case, the image will be independent of consciousness, appearing to consciousness according to laws peculiar to an image which is not consciousness. Such an image, which must be awaited, deciphered, and observed, is simply a thing. Any inert or opaque content takes its place, by the necessity inherent in its type of existence, among objects, that is to say, in the external world. That there are only two types of existence, as thing in the world and as consciousness, is an ontological law.²²

22. i, pp. 124-126; ipc, pp. 114-16 (translation changed).

A whole world-view was thus implicit in Sartre's study of imagination. Implicit, and also at stake; for as he went on to argue, it was the act of imagination, as he conceived it, that distinguished the first of these two types of existence – spontaneous consciousness – from the second – the inertia of things – and conserved it in its specificity. 'If we assume a consciousness placed in the very bosom of the world as one existent among others, we must conceive it, hypothetically, as completely subjected to the action of a variety of realities – without its being able to transcend the detail of these realities by an intuition which would embrace their totality. This consciousness could therefore contain only real modifications aroused by real actions and all imagination would be prohibited to it, exactly in the degree to which it was engulfed in the real. This conception of imagination enmired in the world is not unknown to us since it is precisely that of psychological determinism.'²³ And conversely, 'if it were possible to conceive for a moment of a consciousness which does not imagine it would have to be conceived as completely engulfed in the existent and without the possibility of grasping anything but the existent.'²⁴ Without this capacity, consciousness was 'crushed in the world, run through by the real'. Thus, in the opposition of things and consciousness, laws and freedom, inertness and spontaneity, the power of imagining was decisive. Imagination was the 'necessary condition' of freedom in the world.

The Lacunae of Sartre's Analysis

In every sentence of Sartre's carefully delimited study, the latent issue is that of human freedom. This theme will be explored, in due course. For the present, there remains the technical problem posed by these analyses of the imagination and its theorists. What were the effects of Sartre's philosophical presuppositions and ulterior concerns on the arguments of L'Imagination and L'Imaginaire?

It is evident, to begin with, that his definition of 'imagination' is extremely partial, and even distortive. The term 'imagination' has always included among its referents activities which are neither image-forming, in any important sense, nor constitutively negative in their relation to the real world – activities in which, on the contrary,

23. ip, p.233; pi, pp.266-67 (translation changed).

24. ip, p.237; pi, pp.271-72 (translation changed).

Imagining Versus Perceiving 45

we mentally reconstitute a certain real word from the fragments directly available to us, or act directly upon the real world, intentionally and creatively.²⁵ But Sartre's 'brief history of the problem of imagination' is precisely restricted to the narrow faculty of image-forming. Moreover, this conceptual restriction is accompanied by historical omission.²⁶ The chief objects of discussion in Sartre's 'brief history', as given in the table of contents in L'Imagination, are 'The Principle Metaphysical Systems' (Descartes, Leibniz, Hume), 'Associationism' (Taine, Ferri, Brochard, Ribot), Bergson and Bergsonism, and the Wurzburg School. Two crucial names are missing from this list, the names of two thinkers who turned all previous thinking about imagination upside down, and effectively defined the terms of modern discussion of it: Kant and Coleridge. Many previous writers had spoken of the productive and reproductive imagination, of the faculties of creating anew (fantasy) and of recalling old perceptions (imagination). The tradition had spoken of a higher and a lower activity, the first (before Kant) being the safe, controlled ability to reproduce, and the second, the blind, chaotic, sensual power to make new things.²⁷ Kant continued the distinction in The Critique of Pure Reason, but subverted its established meaning, showing that the 'lower' faculty alone shaped the jumble of sense data encountered by us into a coherent whole.²⁸ After Kant, and especially with Coleridge, the honorific name of 'imagination' was given to the productive, spontaneous faculty, while the pejorative 'fancy' was attached to the routine, reproductive faculty. The imagination no longer merely reproduced what had already been experienced: it invented new objects and grasped their truth at the same time. The one-hundred-and-twenty-five-year span between Hume and Taine was in fact the decisive period in thinking about the imagination by English, German and French theorists, as the standard histories of aesthetics, literary theory and criticism bear out.²⁹ In Sartre's 'brief history' it is a complete blank.

25. See E.J. Furlong, Imagination, New York 1961.

26. i, p.6.

27. Murray Wright Bundy, 'The Theory of Imagination in Classical and Medieval Thought, University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, XII, 2-3. (Urbana 1927) – an excellent but neglected historical study.

28. The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, London 1961, p.81.

29. See Monroe Beardsley, Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present. A Short History, New York 1966; M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition, New York 1958; and René Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism: 1750-1950, Volume V: The Romantic Age, New Haven 1955.

Imagining versus Perceiving

My initial question was: what are the effects of Sartre's presuppositions on his study of the imagination? Do they distort his professed intentions? It is now possible to answer in the affirmative, and to say how and for what reason this distortion occurs. The exclusion of all imaginative activities except that of image-forming, and of that crucial moment in the history of thought where imagining and perceiving were seen as inseparable, was made in the interests of the stark conceptual opposition that rises steadily towards the surface of Sartre's analysis: 'the image and the perception', he concludes, 'far from being two elementary psychical factors of similar quality and which simply enter into different combinations, represent the two main irreducible attitudes of consciousness.'³⁰ The consequences of this opposition can be seen in Sartre's discussion of the 'external image', where he attempts to explain exactly what happens when I 'see' Peter in the photograph before me, or the person depicted in a painting. 'We become aware, somehow, of animating the photo, of lending it life in order to make an image of it.' Let us begin with our 'normal perception' of the photograph. 'As a perception, the photograph is but a paper rectangle of a special quality and colour, with shadows and white spots distributed in a certain fashion.'³¹ Looking at it in this way, I see before me a real, existing object of the world. 'This photo, taken by itself, is a thing: I can try to ascertain the duration of its exposure by its colour, the product used to tone and fix it, etc.; the caricature is a thing: I can take pleasure in studying its lines and colours without thinking that they were intended to represent something.'³² However Peter will not appear in the photograph or caricature, unless my attitude changes dramatically: 'an external object functioning as an image cannot exercise that function without an intention which interprets it as such.'³³ I must cease to see the shades, tones and lines for themselves, and look 'through' them to sight Peter. Through the photo, I envision Peter in his physical individuality. The photo is no longer the concrete object which gives me the perception: it serves as material for the image.'³⁴ For the image to appear the piece of paper must be 'animated by some help from me, giving it a meaning it had not as yet had. If I see Peter by means of

30. ip, p.156; pi, p.171.

31. ip, p.32; pi, p.24.

32. ip, p.31; pi, p.23.

33. ip, p.32; pi, p.24.

Imagining Versus Perceiving 47

the photo it is because I put him there.'³⁵

If I then relax this effort, the image will fade away. I shall once again see only tones and shades on the paper rectangle. Consciousness will revert to another plane: from imagination to perception. Thus, we can conclude that 'every object, whether it is present as an external perception or appears to inward sense, can function as a present reality or as an image, depending on what centre of reference has been chosen. The two worlds, real and imaginary, are composed of the same objects: only the grouping and interpretation of these objects varies. What defines the imaginary world and also the world of the real is an attitude of consciousness.'³⁶

How valid is Sartre's analysis? It is evident that its validity depends on the occurrence of cases where we do not bring knowledge and feeling to the act of perception. But is there any conceivable case where we do not 'animate' what we see, disengaging it from its surroundings and composing it into a coherent whole? We do not perceive without such activity. Thus, it is not that Sartre's account of how we come to sec Peter in the picture is mistaken – it does seem to describe just what goes on. What is mistaken, rather, is to oppose this activity to a wholly factitious alternative, the supposed realistic, passive perception of the materials before us.

Sartre and Husserl

What was the source of this strange account of perception? Sartre's answer was clear and insistent: everything in his books on imagination – terms, lines of thought, examples – had been derived from the writings of Edmund Husserl. Even the critique of a priori theoretical construction and the affirmation of the criterion of experience had originated in Husserl. His declaration has found authoritative support. The historian of phenomenology, Herbert Spiegelberg, has praised these books for their fidelity to Husserl's thought. They are 'by far the most detailed and concrete phenomenological studies of the imagination we have. They are, on the whole, specimens of eidetic description in Hussed's earlier style.'³⁷

It will be instructive, then, actually to compare Sartre's account of

34. ip, p.35; pi, p.27.

35. ip, p.32; pi, p.25.

36. ip, p.34; pi, p.27 (translation changed).

37. The Phenornenological Movement: A Historical Introduction, The Hague 1960, Vol. II, p.498.

perception with Husserl's own discussion, in Ideas. 'Let us consider the engraving by Dürer, "The Knight, Death, and the Devil". We may distinguish first of all the normal perception, the correlative of which is the thing which is the "engraving", this sheet. In the second place, we find the perceptual consciousness in which, through these black lines and little colourless figures, "Knight on horseback", "Death', and "Devil" appear to us.'³⁸ The similarity is striking. There is no doubt that Sartre based his 'Peter' passage directly on this account. And it is this which makes the single, simple difference all the more fascinating: Husserl terms both ways of seeing 'perceptual' while Sartre reserves this term for the first, calling the second 'imaginative'.

Perception, as Husserl describes it, is a complex process. To begin with, we are assured by some sort of 'passive genesis' that 'the Ego always has an environment of "objects".'³⁹ Consciousness is scarcely spontaneous at this level: 'the individual object can "appear", one may be aware of it as apprehended, but without being spontaneously "busied with" it at all.'⁴⁰ So far, Sartre concurs. But for Husserl this is just the beginning of a rich and detailed account of what we actively do to perceive a world of objects, while for Sartre there is no more to be said about perception. Thus, we have seen him say that 'perceptual consciousness appears to itself as being passive';⁴¹ and further, in a misleading comment on Husserl's notion of passive genesis, that 'all fictions would be active syntheses, products of our free spontaneity, and all perceptions, on the contrary, would be purely passive syntheses.'⁴² In this way, perception is devalued, expressions like 'free spontaneity', 'creative will', 'continuous creation' and 'spontaneous and creative' being reserved for the discussion of image-forming. For Husserl, the presentation of bare materials to a waiting consciousness does not yet constitute an intelligible world of experience. This can only come into being through 'the Ego', in subsequent acts which could certainly be described as 'spontaneous', 'creative', and 'free'. From the outset the Ego has 'spontaneous tendencies to turn towards

38. Ideas: A General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. W.R. Boyce Gibson, New York 1931, §111, p.311; cited in i, p.149; ipc, pp.135-36.

39. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion

Cairns, The Hague 1960. §38, p.79.

40. Ideas. §23, p.91.

41. ip, p.26; pi, p.18.

42. i, p.157; ipc, p.142.

Imagining Versus Perceiving 49

the world and to grasp it'.⁴³ Syntheses, acts of belief and of valuation all are necessary in order for the finished world of experience to appear. Husserl speaks of the Ego's free spontaneity and activity, and affirms that it does not remain a 'passive indweller', that – on the contrary – it appears as 'a primary source of generation'. He distinguishes two components of what is, finally, the perceived world: the 'formless materials' and 'immaterial forms', the sensile hyle and the intentional morphé. The hyle includes all brute sensory contents – 'the data of colour, touch, sound and the like.'⁴⁴ By themselves these sensory materials are incomprehensible: meaning must be bestowed on them. 'Sensory data offer themselves as material for intentional informing or bestowals of meaning at different levels . . . '⁴⁵ Thus the 'material elements are "animated" through noetic phases, they undergo . . . "formal shaping" . . . [receive] "gifts of meaning" . . . '⁴⁶ The finished object of experience appears when the 'noetic' acts of consciousness, 'animating the material and weaving themselves into unitary manifolds, into continuous syntheses, so bring into being the consciousness of something, that in and through it the objective unity of the field of objects . . . may permit of being consistently "declared", "shown forth", and "rationally" determined.'⁴⁷

Sartre's study acknowledged the inspirational role of Husserl's account, and appeared only to extend and supplement it. But it is now clear that Sartre in effect dismembered Husserl's analysis in order to establish a polar opposition between perception and imagination. He presented 'passive synthesis' – the first phase, according to Husserl– as the whole of perception, which thus lost its active, spontaneous character. The active consciousness was then redeployed in opposition to perception as the distinctive faculty of image-forming. Thus, the two interconnected aspects of perception, of our involvement in the daily world of experience, became for Sartre two wholly different kinds of consciousness: the one passively waiting for objects to come before it, the other actively conjuring up unreal objects; the one trapped in the world, the other free.

43. Ideas, §28, p.104.

44. Ibid., §85, p.246.

45. Ibid., §85, p.247.

46. Ibid., §97, p.285.

47. Ibid., §86, p.251.

Trapped or free: as question, as challenge, as predicament, this opposition was to be permanent in Sartre's thought. We shall see how, even as he insisted on the purest possible forms of human freedom, Sartre reverted again and again to images of an uninhabitable world. It is striking that Husserl, remaining strictly at the level of a priori consciousness, should have conveyed a sense of rich human creativity, while Sartre, the champion of activity, evoked a state of helpless immersion in things, mitigated only by the capacity to imagine the unreal. The distinctive tonality of Sartre's work – the affirmation of human creativity, counterpointed by an equally radical pessimism – was already present in these most technical of studies.