JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Imagination and emotion97imagine Peter as he might be at this moment in Berlin—or simply Peter as he exists atthis moment (and not as he was yesterday on leaving me), I grasp an object which isnot at all given to me or which is given to me simply as being beyond reach. There Igrasp nothing, that is, I posit nothingness. In this sense the imaginative consciousnessof Peter in Berlin (what is he doing at this moment? I imagine he is walking in theKurfürstendamm, etc.), is very much closer to that of the centaur (whose completenon-existence I proclaim), than the recollection of Peter as he was the day he left.What is common between Peter as an image and the centaur as an image is that they aretwo aspects of Nothingness. And this it is that also distinguishes the living future fromthe imagined future. There are in fact two sorts of futures: the one is but the temporalground on which my present perception develops, the other is posited for itself but asthat which is not yet. When I play tennis I see my opponent hit the ball with his racketand I run to the net. Here there is real anticipation since I foresee the course of the ball.But this anticipation does not posit for itself the passage of the ball to this or thatpoint. In reality the future is here only the real development of a form induced by thegesture of my opponent, and the real gesture of this opponent communicates itsreality to the whole form. In other words, the real form with its zones of real-past andreal-future is effected entirely as a result of his gesture. As for my prevision also beingreality, I continue to carry out the form by foreseeing it, because my prevision is a realgesture within the form. Thus, step by step, there is always a real future which occurssimply as the real past, the sense of an actual form in development, or, in other words,as the meaning of the universe. And, in this sense, it makes no difference whether wethink of the unperceived real aspects of objects as a present which is real but empty,or as a real future. The arabesques hidden by the chair are the real complement of thegesture by which I remove the chair, as the present and latent existence hidden by thechair. All real existence occurs with present, past and future structures, therefore pastand future as essential structures of the real are equally real, that is, they are correlativesof a realizing theme. But if, on the contrary, while lying on my bed I anticipate whatmight happen when my friend Peter returns from Berlin, I detach the future from thepresent whose meaning it constitutes. I posit it for itself and I present it to myself.But I give it to myself precisely while it is not, yet, that is to say, as absent, or if oneprefers, as nothing. Thus, I can live the same future in reality as a ground of the present(as, for instance, when I look for Peter at the station and all my acts have for their realmeaning the arrival of Peter at 7:35 p.m.), or, on the other hand, I can isolate it andposit it for itself but by cutting it off from all reality and by annihilating it, bypresenting it as nothingness.We can now see what the essential requisite is in order that a consciousness may beable to imagine; it must possess the possibility of positing an hypothesis of unreality.