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362 viewsSartre and Ryle On The Imagination by Paul Ricoeur
Sartre and Ryle on the Imagination by Paul Ricoeur
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/ 8
THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS
VOLUME XVI
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
EDITED BY
PAUL ARTHUR SCHILPP
SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY—CARBONDALE,
LA SALLE, ILLINOIS ¢ OPEN COURT « ESTABLISHED 1885
Paul Ricoeur
SARTRE AND RYLE ON THE IMAGINATION
R. Bradley DeFord, Translator
T is not casy to draw out all the consequences of the decisive distinc
tion introduced by Kant between productive and reproductive imagina-
tion. Philosophy of the imagination has a preference for images that can be
regarded as mental or physical replicas (photographs, pictures, drawings,
fiagrams) of an absent thing. Thus it tends to neglect heuristic fictions in a
icologics and utopias). In a gencral way,
micient as well as classical and modern—fails to account
agination in terms that do not reduce it to “reproduc-
imagination. The claim of the fiction-image, over against the picture~
litficult to maintain throughout.
Sartre and Ryle are taken here as representatives of certain tentative
modern philosophers who recognize the irreducibility of the image of the
art of imagining, but who nevertheless fail to liberate the image from its
bondage to the model or original of which it would be the picture or rep-
lica. The choice of these two men is, however, motivated more particularly
ilosophy of
but in terms of theory as well. In fact
ties than differences, and among their
ir common unwillingness to deviate from
‘the paradigm of reproductive imagination. In that sense, I see them as two
modern thinkers who reinforee the primacy of the original in spite of their
efforts to acknowledge the specificity of the imagination. But because the
specificity they acknowledge is defined by difference from straight seeing or
the second of three
, Penasyvania. The
‘ously been published.‘much time on the difference of method between these
assume that a linguistic analysis, which
‘our statements about experience, cannot st
facts without putting what we say under
critique of language ressure of
experience is well supported by
counterexamples which play a role similar to that of Husser!’s
tive variations.” On the other hand, | assume that a phenomenology,
claims to start with lived experience, never seeks merely to re
experience, but inquires into its structures on the basis of
ight links essences to examples in @ way that differs from
the inductive linkage between laws and facts. Furthermore, the “reduc
tion” of the pseudo-evidence of the given as already there and already
(ed compels us to articulate the complex meanings which appear to
between the theory of essential intuition
mm of meaning leads us to say that
A speakability of lived
mn is the factor common to
this is way I do not want to em-
1 oUF puFpOse.
phenomenolo;
experience. U
guistic analysis and phi
phasize a difference «
SARTRE
Let me say at the outset that in focusing on the two volumes that Sartre
devotes specifically to the subject of the imagination—Imagination: A Psy-
‘chological Critique and The Psychology of Imagination=-1 am not claiming
that these two works express his complete thought on the subject. In order
juld have to take into account
ism, bis monographs
framework of this context.
A principal decision is made at the begi
chological Critique. That decision concerns a paradig
will never be dislodged from its prominent position. The
duce an image of my friend Peter, who dwells in Berlin. This choice of
‘examples, as we shall see, is not without consequences. It imposes from the
very outset the paradigm of absence. Later on, the case of non-existent
entities will introduce no dramatic change in this description.
i
IE IMAGINATION 169
can be explail
. The best way
solve the fallacy of immanence is to address on
whose referent exists elsewhere.
same Peter may be
the theory of the image. On the contrary,
reinforced by all the arguments that underscore the difference between a
mental image and 2 perceived object. Let us recall the arguments: The
sal the sense of a simuilacrum endowed with
lesser thing, possessed
ots own existence, given to consciousness like any ther thing, a
taining external relations to the thing of w is the image” (5).* Sartre
that the principal metaphysical systems (Des-
cartes, Leibaiz, and Hume) all share the projudice of “metaphysical iden-
tification” between image and porception, Even more modern psychol-
‘ogies, such as those influenced by Bergson and the Wartzburg school of
in psychology, only make the image more fluid but no less a
thing. “The image remains in the guise of an inert element” (77). Philoso-
phers and psychologists, equally deceived by the fallacy of immanence
and its corollary, the substa
Wf AEE con
inguish between essen-
is spontaneity-consciousness, pertainin, ie of having
image, which supports and grounds the difference between image and
1. The self-transparency accompanying this spontaneity-consciousness
“That there arc only two types of existence, as
ig-in-the-world and as consciousness, is an ontological law” (116).
* The parenheialy placed muters in this section refer to pages
nation: A Psychological Crit Pt170 PAUL RICOEUR
‘The paradox is that this polemic does not shake the privilege of the
original in the slightest. On the contrary, it reasserts that privilege. As Hus-
sett tells us, to have an image isto be intentionally directed toward some-
thing, In the example of the flute-playing centaur discussed by Husser] in
Ideas I, the centaur as such (that is, as represented) is not a psychic state: it
exists nowhere; nevertheless, it is not the invention itself. This example
from fiction compels us to consider the. problem of fiction in terms of @
transcendent n But what about the object of the image of Sartre's
friend Peter? Here is a real object that is the same for perception as for
imagination. Image and perception aim in two different ways at the exis
Peter. Shall we say that the image nevertheless has an object (Peter
image”), in the same way that the invention of the centaur has the repre-
sented centaur as its object? Then there are two objects, and we unwit-
tingly re-establish the inert content which we have denounced and at the
same time deny our initial tater tthe image was only a relation, 2
mode of givenness. It seems, therefore, that the referent of the fiction and
the referent of the picture cannot be treated within the same framework.
Husserl’s centaur is not an image of an existing object, as Sartre's image of
Peter is." But in Imagination itis uncritically assumed that the theory of the
picture may be extended to that of the fiction, and vice versa. That is why
Sartre's concluding statement remains ambiguous: “An image can enter
into consciousness only if itis @ syathesis, not an element. ‘There are not,
and never could be, imagesin consciousness. Rather, image isa certain type
of consciousness. An image is an act, not some thing, An image is a eon-
sciousness of some thing” (146). But which some thing? ‘The real Peter, or
‘a mental appearance. as the object of the act?
The Psychology of Imagination* provides partial answers to. this
paradox of the object of the picture-image and, in the process, further rein-
forces the strategic position of the original of the picture. The reinforce-
‘ment begins with the assertion that the first characteristic of the image is,
that the image is a “consciousness.” It is for reflective consciousness that
the image appears as an object. For direct intentional consciousness, the
object is Peter-out-there. It is that Peter who appears in the form of an
image. It only when T reflect and try to describe the image as an image
(that is, by an act of the second degree) that Lform the judgment: [have an
image.
This having been acknowledged, we must reassert that the same chair,
at one time perceived and at another time imagined, exists out there:
“Whether I see or imagine that chair, the object of my perception and that
+ The pareabetcal placed numbers inthis section sles to pages i Sastre, The Foy
Ina tr. by Bernard Frechtman (2
1966)
5. SARTRE AND RYLE ON THE IMAGINATION m
of my image are iden is that chair of straw on which I am seated
Only consciousness is related in two different ways to the same chair” (7).
‘The ouly correct way of speaking of the absent friend Peter would be to
speak of “the imaginal consciousness of Peter” (7), Thus itis the object of
perception which gives an object to the picture.
The key position of the original is again reinforced by the second
characteristic of the image, that of its being not observed, but quasi-
observed. To observe is to learn endlessly from the inexhaustible richness
of the perceived thing. By “nothing can be learned from an image
that is not already known" (11). Quasi-observation “is an observation
which teaches nothing” (12). We move in “a world in which nothing hap-
pens” (13)
Buti not this poverty of the image a feature of the image of the absent,
which is not applicable to fiction? 1s not this poverty the counterpart of the
richness of the original? We shall see that fiction does not share this pov-
erty of the image of an absent object, but rather produces new meaning
capable of generating a metamorphosis of reality.
‘The denial of the specificity of fiction is made complete with the third
characteristic of the image: its character of nothingness. This character,
which is proper to the positional act of imagining as it appears for a reflec.
five, non-thetic consciousness, blurs all the important contrasts between
ind picture. Sartre asserts that “this [imaginal] act can assume four
and no more: it ean posit the object as non-existent, or as absent, o
ing elsewhere; it can also neutralize itself, that is, not posit its object
as existing” (15). This lst allows Sartre to generalize the negative character
of the positional act of absence to the point of non-existence. But the four
forms of the list are not homogeneous. Absence and presence are sub-
classes of reality, as the example of Peter shows: the same Petex is the
object of both the perception and the image. Howes
uunreality is opposed both to absence and to preseuce as reality. Therefore,
@ theory of absence cannot be extended to a theory of unreality. This logi-
cal error excludes from the discussion the case of fiction on its own terms,
Consequently, the fourth characteristic, that of spontaneity, is applied
indiscriminately to both picture and fiction, since it becomes merely the
counterpart to the fact that the object occurs as a nothingness. Can we say,
however, that when consciousness invents it is ereative in the same way as
when it produces the image of an absent thing or person? In the one case it
creates its object, the ihe other, it seems to me, it creates only the
mode of givenness, and this creation is only for the non-thetic reflective
consciousness.
Does the next chapter of this work open the description to the specific
traits of fiction? Apparently not. Is inquiry into the image-family is di-in PAUL RICOBUR
rected toward a problem that concerns only the relation between two kinds
of pictures, the physical picture and the mental picture—not the relation,
-¢ and fiction. Both Kinds of pictures make an object present
h cases the problem that absorbs
that of the role of the analogue. This problem, once ag
‘to an original, whose analogue is a likeness. In the case of a purely meatal
image, the search for the analogical representative of the aimed-at object is
and to my mind very
fhrough caricatures,
impersonifications, schematic drawings, to interpretation of spots, shapes,
ctc., and hypnagogic images, the material analogue disappears step by st
imate to form the “
hypothesis that now ocular movements and feelings exert the same
function (as regards the morphic function of the intentional attitude) as the
physical support of the portrait.
as genial as this description may be, it reinforces the privilege of
the original by its very aitempt—which is, to my mind, successf
gencralize on the concept of the analogue from the physical picture to the
ture. The picture-family has found its homogeneity, perhaps, at
paradigm. This is
this remarkable
of consciousness
absent person appe: if
lly to possess the absent. This desire turns into
produce the object of one’s thought, the thing
‘one can take possession of it” (159). Desire
wants to “obtain” things, even to “reproduce their integral existence”
(159): "The object is reproduced for no other purpose than to arouse feel
ing” (182). (One will have noticed the insistence on reproduction in this
context of self-deception.)
5. SARTRE AND RYLE ON THE IMAGINATION 173
on the role of absence. It
evoke a more
Jess compulsive reactions
ary objects to the act of
Sis not die if o asi To wo erent
. Further, Sates dcsson of lsc sonmaotance se,
that the spontaneiy of consciousness and the experience o oe
ascribed fo the same phenomenon, masterfully Sescbed we spellbourd
rant or fatality 238), That exp most general and fun-
mental assertions concerning the hentity between onee
“the possiblity of posting sn hypothesis of unweaiy”
vse 104 theoty of ction And
id requisite if conscious
posit the worl
situation for
image” (239-40). But this
nthe problematic of
n between fiction
on-existence of fiction’s object,
Phenomenology of fetion would have to turn ts bal
magical
for the sake of a
Rye
Tam not interested in the obvious epistemolo;
Je and Sartre. Declai jose of Sartre
the capacity of consciousness to neg world of reality and
the correlation between freedom and the nothingness of our images are
‘able on the part of Ryle. Even the idea that the philosopher
structure of imagination is foreign to
in Concept of Mind, prefers to start
m of the sorts of behavior that we should
il ive (256).* Divergence is
‘Sartre concerning the consis-
tency of the field covered by the word “image.
divergent sorts” of behavior, Ry
section refer to pages in Gilbert Rye
Concept of Mind (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1949).am PAUL RICOEUR
of aromance,
their imaginat
‘witness, the colleague giving his opinion on
reader, the nurse who refrains from adm
human noises, the drama critic and the 0
specificity of fictions among the “divergent sorts of behavior.
important fraction of the quoted examples obviously belong t0 this st
class?
But paradoxically enough, the initial discrepancy between Ryle and
Sartre is offset by a convergence in their polemical concerns, which leads
‘Ryle to pick as a paradigmatic case for his plea the same kind of example as
Sartre. emphasized, that ‘age of something. Furthermore,
the concept of “pretending” which provides Ryle's key for solving—or
issolving—the apparent paradox displayed by the mental image rein-
forces the primacy of the original as much as does Sartre's concept of
ation” of the absent friend
ig the polemical concern of Concept of Mind to impose on
, namely imagining that we see”
ie commonly describe as ‘having a
mental picture of Helvellyn’ or “having Helvellyn before the mind's
eye” —which suggests most strongly “the notion that a mind is a ‘place,’
“where mental pictures are seen and reproductions of voices and tunes are
heard” (256). As the reader will readily observe, this special case of imag-
ining does not represent the whole list of “widely divergent sorts," but it
does shift the emphasis from productive imagination to reproductive imag-
ination. At this point the kinship between Ryle and Sartre begins. “Having
Helvellyn before the mind's eye” is like reproducing an image of our friend
Peter from Berlin, In fac, this startling convergence in the choice of exam~
ples proceeds from a common polemical concern, Both writers fight against
tnisconstructions, misdescriptions, and misconceptions, and both claim to
provide a new, more accurate account of what is actually experienced, This
prok ity legitimates my contention that, beyond their theoretical
ivergences, linguistic analysts and phenomenologists have a great deal in
common in their practice of description. Both would amend fallacious de-
‘scription by looking more closely at experience on the basis of well-chosen.
examples.
"The fallacious description that Ryle and Sartre want to dismantle is
much the same, namely, the description of images 2s entities existing
‘mind, which is itself conceived as the asylum o theatre where these
‘occur. While Sartre invokes the transparency and the sponta
5. SARTRE AND RYLE ON THE IMAGINATION 175
sciousness, Ryle would list among meaningless statements about the mind
all of Sartre's assertions about consciousness. But this radical divergence at
the level of fundamental assumptions concerning the mind or conscious
ness does not prevent ther from attacking the same descriptions as falla-
cious and from drawing the same conclusion: “To see is one thing; to pic-
ture or visualize is another” (246)
Secondly, the analysis of “pretending,” which Ryle elaborates for itself
before applying it to the apparent paradox of the image as something seen
in the mind's eye, has the same consequence as Sartre's theory of quasi-
observation with respect to the priviloge of the original in the theory of the
image as picture. The analysis of “pretending” is introduced by arguments
ien to Sartre's phenomenology. Sartre would not say that to see in
ind's eye is to seem to see, because for him to deny that images exist
in the mind does not imply that they appear before us. Quasi-observation is
a kind of observation. Here phenomenology would help us in distinguish-
ing between existing and appearing. Neither would Sartre say that the
‘wrong description is induced by the existence of physical pictures bearing,
For him, visible pictures are not
posited as real but as analogues, which are the neutralized bearers of an
rough and beyond the physical thing, Therefore Sartre
ure” (Ryle, p. 247), since for him (accordins
sis) the analogue of the
'ing appears as the corre
through a hyletic analogue of the
hyletic analogue h:
is. I would say that
and of pretending) impose the reference of the picture to an original as the
main structure of the mental image.
Ryle’s frame of reference the analysis of pretending is, of
“0 logical analysis. It is a transposition into the sphere of doing of a
Similar structure from the sphere of talking. When we quote a statement,
assume an assertion, and in all similar cases of ovatio obliqua, we are doing,
something more complex than merely asserting. We must first understand176 PAUL RICOEUR
what it is to assert, then we must qualify it in two ways, namely as not
asserting and as quasi-asserting. In the same way, such acts as cheating,
playing a part, forging @ signature, and playing bears, whether or not they
constitute deliberate simulation or dissi performances
‘with a certain sort of complex description” (260). We must be able to de-
seribe some action directly in order to make sense of the complex descrip-
ng a main clause (such as “X fights”) plus a subordinate clause
be analyzed as a non-
performance and
The main advantage of this account of pretending is sets up
f pretending for a treat
ncied perce;
by which we listen and follow and do something that can be
eared. As Ryle the real difference is not between mock action and
mock perception, but between performance and as-if performance.
ing Helvellyn is realizing how Helvellyn would look. An
something which stands in the same relation to seeing Helvel
ticated performances stand to those more naive performances, whose men-
tion is obliquely contained in the de mn of the higher order perfor-
ances” (266).
Thave no objection to this analysis of the logic of “pretending” as such,
1 take it for granted. My only reservations would be these: On the one
hand, I doubt that “seeing in the mind’s eye” can be construed, without
“playing at..."
ited reasons pertaining to the specific mode of appearance
mncier whether the logic of the hypo-
logy of nothingness and of likeness
‘as partially developed by Sartre. The grammar of oratio obliqua shows
the trace in language of an oper: at iraplies our capacity to deny
reality and to invent something of the real, cither in the form of a
picture or in the form of fiction.
is point, we could make many objections to Ryle from the
phenomenology. These reservations, however,
are not my main concern, which is the import of this analysis of “pretend-
ing” for our discussion about pictures and fictions.
‘The parallel between Sartre’s analysis of quasi-observation and Ryle’s
analysis of “pretending” resides in their common trait of indirect reference
to an original situation, is in one case quasi-observed and in the
5. SARTRE AND RYLE ON THE IMAGINATION 47
other ease quasi-performed. In other words, Ryle's oblique mention of a
naive performance in a mock-performance posits the same kind of depe:
dence on an original as does Sartre’s present
image.” In both cases an original precedes—
