The phenomenological status of an affective response to the imaginary in Husserl’s and Sartre’s works

The paper focuses on the phenomenological status of an affective response to the imaginary in Husserl’s and Sartre’s works. Initially Husserl supposed that intentional objects of phantasy and perception may be identical. In turn, an imagination (fantasy) can substantiate affective acts, that is, the imaginary can become the subject of an emotional reaction. Along with fantasies, which are only the background of our conscious life, there are such ones in which we “live”, being absorbed in a fantasized object “to self-forgetfulness”.

The feelings aimed at the imaginary may in the case seem no different from the real ones. R. Hopkins considers that position as reasonable, and the point of view of Sartre, who asserts the opposite, as vulnerable. However the article shows that both Husserl and Sartre discovered that affectivity plays its role even in the perceptual objects constitution.

The image, according to Sartre, is constituted entirely by means of affectivity and knowledge, in connection with which it is characterized by “essential poverty”, that is, it is impossible to learn anything new from the image.

Earlier, Husserl came to the conclusion about a radical difference between objects of fantasy and perception, changing his original opinion. A fantasized object is quasi-seen because it isn’t given as actually present and feelings directed to it undergo modification and represent a “quasi-feeling”. Sartre follows Husserl’s way and claims that affective acts related to the imaginary are rather enacted than experienced since they have neither the independence nor the inexhaustibility of the real. There is nothing in fantasied object to feed the feeling consequently it becomes more abstract and finally disappears.

1. Hopkins, R. (2011), “Imagination and Affective Response”, Reading Sartre. On phenomenology and existentialism, Routledge, London and New York, pp. 100–117.

2. Richmond, S. (2011), “Magic in Sartre’s Early Philosophy”, Reading Sartre. On phenomenology and existentialism, Routledge, London and New York, pp. 145–160.