JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Imagination and emotion93that the image itself includes an act of belief, an act of positing (or notpositing) an object. The image is a relation, not an object. It is a relationbetween subject and object.Succumbing to the illusion of immanence involves thinking ofconsciousness as a place, and thinking of images as ‘in’ consciousness.Sartre thinks of Hume as the paradigm case of someone who commits thisfallacy. However, he thinks it widespread in philosophy, psychology andcommon sense.Because he denies that consciousness is a place, a strange non-physicalplace, in The Psychology of Imagination Sartre regards expressions of theform ‘a mental image of Peter’ as philosophically misleading and ‘theimaginative consciousness of Peter’ as philosophically perspicuous evenif Peter does not exist. Imagining an imaginary object is logically parasiticon imagining a real object, rather as holding a false belief depends uponbeing capable of holding a true belief.In the extract from The Psychology of Imagination called ‘Consciousnessand Imagination’ reprinted below, we see Sartre’s existentialphenomenology applied to the mental image. He also introduces the conceptof negation which is important for understanding Chapter 6 of this book.In the extract from Sketch For a Theory of the Emotions Sartre applies thedoctrine of intentionality to emotion and draws distinctions between beingconscious and being conscious of being conscious. He argues that anemotion is a transformation of the world. Although it is always part of ourexistential predicament to choose, to act, the world frustrates us in ourpreferences. At that moment we choose an emotion in an effort to transformthe world as if by magic. Disturbingly, it follows that we are responsible forour emotions. We see here not only the repudiation of scientific psychology,but that Sartrean fusion of existentialism and phenomenology called‘existential phenomenology’.THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE IMAGINATIONConsciousness and imaginationWe are now in a position to raise the metaphysical question which has been graduallyshaping itself through these studies of phenomenological psychology. We mayformulate it as follows: what are the characteristics that can be attributed to