Summary: The Imaginary (page 3)

There are objects in the external world that are also called images—portraits, mirror reflections, and imitations. Are they really images?

We can distinguish the mental image of Peter, in which certain details are forgotten; the photograph of Peter, which retains all details yet lacks life; and finally, the caricature of Peter, where the details are distorted (exaggerated), yet conveys a sense of life.

All three seek to render Peter present to me. Yet only the first is traditionally called an image. Is this justified?

In the photograph or the caricature, the material can be perceived in itself: it is not inherent to its nature that it must function as the material of images.¹ The photograph is one thing, and so is the caricature itself.

For something to function as an image, there must always be an intention: I can perceive the photograph as a mere rectangle of colour. For me to see Peter in it, I must actively contribute, animating this piece of cardboard and endowing it with a meaning it did not inherently possess. I perceive Peter in the photograph because I project him onto it.²

Sartre thus proposes the following definition of the image: the image is an act that, in its corporeality, targets an absent or non-existent object by means of a physical or mental content, which does not present itself as such but functions instead as an 'analogical representative' of the intended object.³

Any object can function either as a present reality or as an image.⁴ Peter's photograph is no longer the concrete object provided to me by perception; it serves as the material for the image.

Traditional psychology often conflates sign and image.

When I think of Peter in the painting, this means that I am not thinking about the painting itself at all; I am thinking of Peter.⁵

In different types of images, such as mimes, portraits, and similar forms, the process involves animating some material so that it becomes the representation of an absent or non-existent object.
The material was never a perfect analogon of the object to be represented; a certain interpretative knowledge intervened to make sense of it and fill in the gaps. These correlative elements—material and knowledge—varied from case to case ⁶.

The Probable

As we have just seen, an image cannot exist without a form of knowledge that constitutes it.⁷

Psychology has made great progress through the contributions of Brentano, Husserl, and Scheler.

For the old French school, a sentiment or affective state was nothing more than something experienced.

This radically cuts off feeling from its object. Feeling is thus presented as a purely subjective and ineffable trembling—pure subjectivity, pure interiority.⁸

Experienced states are, in this approach, nothing more than flows of subjective, inexpressible qualities. Feelings have no object.

For Proust and his followers, the link between my love and the loved person is reduced to one of mere contiguity: Feeling has been isolated from its meaning.⁹

In reality, there is no such thing as an affective state; rather, there are affective consciousnesses.

Joy, anguish, and melancholy are forms of consciousness,¹⁰ which, like all consciousnesses, are conscious of something.

Feelings are specific forms of intentionality; they constitute one way—among others—of transcending oneself. [...] Hatred is always hatred of someone; love is always love for someone.¹¹

Sartre suggests an experiment: Try to evoke within yourself the subjective phenomena of hatred or indignation, without directing these emotions toward a hated person or an unjust action. No matter how much you tremble or blush, your inner state will be anything but hatred.¹²

However, the object is not apprehended as in an intellectual representation: Feeling is directed toward an object, yet it does so in a specifically affective manner.

The feeling of hatred is Paul's consciousness apprehending the other as hateful: Feeling presents itself as a kind of knowledge. [...] If I love the long, white, slender hands of a particular person, this love, directed toward their hands, can be seen as one of the ways in which they appear to my consciousness.¹³ Yet this does not constitute a form of intellectual knowledge.

¹ II, 1, p.42
² ibid., p.44
³ ibid., p.46
⁴ ibid., p.46
⁵ II, 2, p.54
⁶ II, 7, p.104
⁷ 2nde partie, I, 1
⁸ I, 2, p.136
⁹ ibid., p.137
¹⁰ ibid.
¹¹ ibid.
¹² ibid.
¹³ ibid., p.138