Summary: The Imaginary (page 7)

Conclusion

What are the characteristics that can be attributed to a consciousness capable of imagining? Is its faculty of imagination a contingent or essential property of consciousness? Or again: as soon as we posit a consciousness, must we necessarily posit it as capable of imagining?

I grasp an image as unreal—in other words, I grasp it as nothingness for me:

The imaginative act is at once constitutive, isolating, and annihilating.¹

The essential condition for a consciousness to imagine is that it must have the capacity to posit a thesis of irreality.

Sartre takes the example of the portrait of Charles VIII: in order to perceive it as an image, I must cease to consider the painting as part of the real world.

The object perceived in the painting is no longer susceptible to alteration by changes in the surrounding environment.

The painting itself, as a real thing, can burn—but the image of Charles VIII can no longer be subjected, for example, to variations in lighting. It is not possible to shine more or less light on Charles VIII's cheek. The illumination of that cheek was fixed once and for all in the unreal by the painter.

Similarly, if the painting burns, it is not the image of Charles VIII that burns, but simply the material object serving as an analogon for the manifestation of the imaged object.

For consciousness to produce the imaged object Charles VIII, it must be capable of denying the reality of the painting. To posit an image is to constitute an object on the margins of the totality of the real; it is therefore to hold the real at a distance, to free oneself from it—in a word, to negate it.

Any creation of the imaginary would be impossible for a consciousness whose nature was to be fully immersed in the world.²

If consciousness were enmeshed, [...] mired³ in this world—if there were psychological determinism, if consciousness were merely a succession of determined psychic facts—it would be entirely incapable of producing anything other than the real.

For consciousness to be able to imagine, it must escape the world by its very nature; it must be able to derive from itself a position of distance from the world. In a word, it must be free.⁴

The néantisation that consciousness performs is the reverse side of its freedom: to imagine, consciousness must be free. Imagination is not an incidental feature of consciousness; rather, it is the entirety of consciousness insofar as it realises its freedom.

Sartre can now, in the light of these reflections, turn to the theme of the work of art.

Like the image, the aesthetic object is unreal. [...] What is real are the results of the brushstrokes, the impasto of the canvas, its grain... But precisely, none of this is the object of aesthetic appreciation. What is beautiful, on the contrary, is a being that cannot give itself to perception and that is isolated from the universe.⁵

Since the object in art is unreal, there is a fundamental disinterest in aesthetic vision: it is indifferent whether the object exists.

One objection arises: music does not seem unreal because it refers only to itself. However, when I listen to Symphony No. 7, I close my eyes and separate this music from everything that situates it in the here and now. I do not want to hear it anywhere in particular.

Reality is never beautiful. Beauty is a value that can only be applied to the imaginary and involves the néantisation of the world in its essential structure.⁶

¹ Conclusion, p.348
² ibid., p.353
³ ibid.
⁴ ibid.
⁵ ibid., p.363
⁶ ibid., p.371