Analoga and Phantasmata: On the Intuitiveness of Imagination in Husserl and Sartre

Abstract

In this essay, I study the departure performed in The Imaginary (Sartre, 1940) from the Husserlian position spanning from the Logical Investigations and the 1904/1905 lectures on the imagination. In Sartre’s conception, the imagination in its two forms (“physical image,” “mental image”) is never intuitive. Moreover, in an act of imagination we can never find immanent sensible contents. In Husserl, the imagination in its two forms (“imaging consciousness,” “phantasia”), is a sensible intuition, like perception. Furthermore, every act of imagination apprehends immanent sensible contents (phantasmata).