In the conclusion to The Imaginary Jean-Paul Sartre draws attention to the centrality of imagination in human life, describing it as a constitutive structure of consciousness. Imagination, according to him, is not a contingent feature of consciousness, but one of its essential features. This essay re-examines Sartre’s notion of imagination, arguing that current interpretations do not exhaust its meaning. Beginning with a consideration of dichotomies that dominate his theory of imagination—such as those between present, material objects and absent images, or (...) real entities and fictional creations, as well as interpretative responses to them—the essay moves on to explore the possibility of locating a different sense of imagination in his work, one which is irreducible to such oppositions. Focusing on Sartre’s example of the work of an impersonator, this essay advances the idea that the playful activity of impersonators and actors enables the spectators who are watching them to explore novel and often unfamiliar connections between objects in the world. Imagination, according to this interpretation, enriches and augments perception, rather than suspends or replaces it with mental images. This new interpretation of Sartre’s notion of imagination places him in proximity to Wittgenstein’s discussion of ‘aspect-seeing’ in Philosophical Investigations. However, whereas Wittgenstein’s discussion of ‘aspect-seeing’ can lead to the conclusion that it is impossible to draw a line between perceiving and imagining, the notion of imagination operative in Sartre’s example enables us to maintain and explain the differences between ordinary and ‘imaginative’ perception. (shrink)

Commenting on Jean-Paul Sartre's theory of imagination, Paul Ricoeur argues that Sartre fails to address the productive nature of imaginative acts. According to Ricoeur, Sartre's examples show that he thinks of imagination in mimetic terms, neglecting its innovative and creative dimensions. Imagination, Ricoeur continues, manifests itself most clearly in fiction, wherein new meaning is created. By using fiction as the paradigm of imaginative activity, Ricoeur is able to argue against Sartre that the essence of imagination lies not in its ability (...) to reproduce absent objects, but rather in the ability to transform reality through creative acts. Motivated by the intuition that Sartre the writer could not have forgotten to address such crucial dimensions of imagination, I examine Sartre's philosophical and literary work, showing that not only does he develop a notion of productive imagination, he also puts this notion to work by articulating the relationship between imagination, narrative, and identity formation, well before Ricoeur advanced his narrative-identity theory. I argue that Sartre, like Ricoeur and MacIntyre, another representative of narrative-theory whose criticism of Sartre I address in this essay, views imagination and narrativity as necessary conditions for the formation of a coherent and meaningful sense of self. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre’s early phenomenological texts reveal the complexity of his relationship to Edmund Husserl. Deeply indebted to phenomenology’s method as well as its substance, Sartre nonetheless confronted Husserl’s transcendental turn from Ideas onward. Although numerous studies have focused on Sartre’s points of contention with Husserl, drawing attention to his departure from Husserlian phenomenology, scholars have rarely examined the way in which Sartre engaged and responded to the early Husserl, particularly to his discussions of intentionality, consciousness, and self in Logical Investigations. (...) This essay focuses on Sartre’s critical response to Logical Investigations, arguing that Husserl’s understanding of these three notions shapes and informs Sartre’s own approach to them in The Transcendence of the Ego, “Intentionality: A Fundamental Idea of Husserl’s Phenomenology”, and Being and Nothingness. By carefully reading Sartre side by side with Husserl, this essay arti... (shrink)

Among philosophers, Simone de Beauvoir is unique in treating childhood as a philosophical phenomenon. In both The Ethics of Ambiguity and The Second Sex, she examines the relationship between childhood and human freedom and considers its role in the development of subjectivity. Despite this, few sustained analyses of her treatment of the phenomenon exist. I argue that Beauvoir's conception of childhood is not uniform, but changes from The Ethics of Ambiguity to The Second Sex. Whereas the former presents children as (...) lacking moral freedom, as not fully sovereign individuals, the latter suggests that children are just as free as adults. When children do not fully possess or exercise freedom, it is not because they are not in a position to do so, but rather because various social institutions hinder them. I find this position useful for developing a phenomenological account of childhood as a site for freedom. Hence, Beauvoir becomes a source for thinking of issues in philosophical anthropology concerning the temporality of human existence and the nature of human agency over a lifespan. (shrink)

The article advances an interpretation of the self as an imaginary object. Focusing on the relationship between selfhood and memory in Sartre's The Transcendence of the Ego , I argue that Sartre offers useful resources for thinking about the self in terms of narratives. Against interpretations that hold that the ego misrepresents consciousness or distorts it, I argue that the constitution of the ego marks a radical transformation of the conscious field. To prove this point, I turn to the role (...) of reflection and memory in the creation of the self. Reflection and memory weave past, present and future into a consistent and meaningful life story. This story is no other than the self. I propose to understand the self as a fictional or imaginary entity, albeit one that has real presence in human life. (shrink)

This essay concerns Simone de Beauvoir's analysis of blame and punishment in “Œil pour œil” and the irreconcilable tensions that haunt it. I study these tensions—between the desire to blame and punish and the inability to provide moral justification for these practices—and locate their source in Beauvoir's conception of ethics in Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté. According to my reading, her ethics implies that violence violates freedom, the grounding principle of ethical life. Retaliatory and retributive judgments and the punishment they (...) uphold, regardless of whether they are exerted by individuals or by official state powers, are forms of violence and are therefore unjustifiable. The aporias of blame and punishment in “Œil pour œil” suggest that Beauvoir's ideal of ethics necessitates an abolitionist position regarding punishment. The essay ends with a reflection on the affinity between the position constructed from Beauvoir's work and feminist abolitionist theories that seek to undermine the legal, social, and political institutions that perpetuate, rather than resolve, economic, racial, gender, sex, and class inequality. (shrink)

Imagination is crucial to Joseph Margolis’ philosophy: he addresses its significance for the experience of works of art and, more importantly, he portrays it as constitutive of human reality itself. I explicate these claims and define Margolis’ notion of imagination vis-à-vis Jean-Paul Sartre’s, whose own conception of imagination Margolis rejects. Studying Margolis and Sartre in relation to each other illuminates crucial differences between their positions and highlights the different commitments that underlie their philosophical anthropology as a whole. In the conclusion (...) of this paper, I argue that there are in fact certain affinities between their positions and suggest that we think of the problem of imagination meta-philosophically, as a problem that guides philosophical thought in its various attempts to define the human. (shrink)

G. W. F. Hegel sees Oedipus as an epitome of the philosophical quest for self-knowledge. In Hegel's readings of Oedipus, the latter becomes a distant reflection of the modern and mature Hegelian self, who consciously takes on this quest. Yet unlike Oedipus, whose search for the truth about his past is characterized by both metaphorical and literal blindness, the modern self knows itself, precisely because it understands its past and can thus appropriate and situate itself in relation to the present. (...) For Hegel, self-understanding entails grasping the proper relationship between past and present, which in turn necessitates acknowledging his own relationship to Oedipus. This essay examines Henrik Ibsen's turn to the Hegelian engagement with the past, by focusing on one of the most enigmatic scenes in his 1866 drama, Peer Gynt, where the Norwegian protagonist is cast as Oedipus. The scene examines the drama's own past—through an engagement with a dramatic ancestor—and focuses on the influence of the past on fashioning modern European identity. Moreover, it offers a critique of how the past is utilized in the creation and consolidation of that identity. With this, Ibsen offers an implicit critique of Hegel's understanding of Oedipus, and his encounter with the Sphinx in particular. Revisiting Oedipus through its modern reception, Ibsen questions the act by which the past is revealed as such and is put to work in the service of a particular present. (shrink)