Summary: The Imaginary (page 2)

In perception, the object always appears in a series of profiles or projections ¹.

This is what differentiates the concept from perception: When, on the other hand, I think of the cube as a concrete concept, I conceive its six sides and eight angles at once. I conceive its angles as right and its sides as square. I stand at the centre of my idea, grasping it all at once ².

What now differentiates the image from perception?

The image appears to belong to perception, as here too the object is given through profiles and projections. Yet it also resembles the concept, as it is presented in its totality.

However, there is an essential difference: perception continuously reveals more about the object: I can hold an image before my mind for as long as I wish, yet I will never find anything in it except what I have placed there ³.

In perception, the object maintains a network of relations with other things: At every moment, there is infinitely more than what we can perceive; to fully exhaust the richness of present perception would require infinite time ⁴.

By contrast, the image is marked by an essential poverty ⁵. I have retained only the two or three aspects that I was able to perceive.

The object of perception constantly overflows consciousness, whereas the object of the image never exceeds one's consciousness of it. It is entirely defined by that consciousness; we cannot learn anything from an image that we do not already know ⁶.

Therefore, in the very act of presenting the object as an image, the knowledge of what it is already resides. [...] The image presents everything it contains in a single instant ⁷. In this respect, it resembles the concept, yet it retains a ghostly trace of sensory opacity ⁸, as in perception.

This is what Sartre calls quasi-observation: We adopt the stance of observation, yet it is a form of observation that yields no new knowledge ⁹.

Sartre gives an example: If I summon the image of a book's page, I assume the stance of a reader, as if I were looking at the printed lines. Yet in reality, I am not even looking, because I already know what is written ¹⁰.

The world of images is one where nothing ever happens. I can transform this or that object into an image, I can imagine myself riding a horse, but there will never be the slightest gap between the object and consciousness. Not for a second is there any surprise: the object that moves is not alive; it never exists independently of intention ¹¹.

Sartre points out that every consciousness posits its object, but each does so in its own way ¹². For example, perception posits its object as existing in reality ¹³.

The image, too, involves an act of belief, or a positional act of consciousness.

Within the image, we can identify four different ways in which the object is posited: as non-existent, as absent, as existing elsewhere, or as having its existence suspended.

This is the difference between perception, which affirms existence, and the concept, which affirms only essence: The image encompasses a certain nothingness. In asserting itself, its object negates itself. However vivid or strong an image may be, it presents its object as non-existent ¹⁴.

¹ ibid.
² ibid., p.24
³ ibid., p.25
⁴ ibid., p.26
⁵ ibid.
⁶ ibid., p.27
⁷ ibid.
⁸ ibid., p.28
⁹ ibid.
¹⁰ ibid., p.28
¹¹ ibid., p.29
¹² I, 4, p.32
¹³ ibid.
¹⁴ ibid., p.34