On Sartre’s Theory Of Imagination

In this paper, Husserl’s phenomenology is first introduced to give reader anunderstanding of the background of Sartre’s thoughts. It’s Sartre’s general idea that toimagine is to form images. So Sartre reached four conclusions after he reflect on the images:the image is a consciousness; the phenomenon of quasi-observation; the imaging conscious-ness posits its object as a nothingness; spontaneity. And there are two contradictory theoriesof imagination out of these four conclusions: picture consciousness theory and intentionrelation theory, which I will contrast and analyze. Next, I will give an account of the “imageworld”:(1) what produce an image: the static explanation is that there are three factorinvolved in the image: knowledge, affectivity and movements.The dynamic one is that it’sspontaneity of consciousness that motivates the forming of an image.(2)The irreal object ofthe image, its characteristics and (3) the conduct in the face of the irreal object. From theseSartre wants to show that there’s nothing in common between the imaginary world and theperception world. In the analysis of Dream, hallucination and obsession which areconsidered as paradigm of imagination, we will see that imaging and perceptionconsciousness are two alternating attitude. The third theory of imagination-the suspension ofbelief can been formulated from them.The central concepts of Sartrean existentialism-situation, freedom and bad faith arerooted in his theory of imagination. I will use bad faith as an example to address this.