Image, Imagination, and Imaginary in Sartre

Imagination is devoted to refuting the traditional conception of the image as a mental thing. Here Sartre follows in the footsteps of Husserl and takes up his critique of Bildertheorie. Inasmuch as it is consciousness, the image cannot have an in-itself mode of being. Sartre therefore shows for the special case of images what he shows with regard to consciousness in general, namely, that it is “an act, not a thing.” It is not “in” consciousness, which is not a container, it is rather the ek-stasis of consciousness toward an object. The image is a certain way of relating to an object, of being toward this object. Similarly, material images (paintings, photographs, diagrams, etc.) are not images in themselves, they become symbolic and eloquent only through an act of interpretation, a certain modality of intentionality.