The Image Family Expands

This flow follows Sartre’s expansion from mental imagery to portraits, imitations, patterns, and other experiences that make absent or fictional objects present.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

Beyond Mental Images

One Function Across Different Materials A broader field Sartre asks whether portraits, reflections, imitations, and private mental images merely share a word or belong to a common family. He argues that each can involve an intention directed at an absent or nonexistent object. The material differs from case to case: a photograph, an actor’s body, a pattern, or a psychic sensation can serve as the representative medium. A comparative method Moving through these examples lets Sartre describe imagination where its material is visible before confronting the harder case of the mental image.

Signs Become Image Matter

From Indication to Presence Two routes to an absent object A written sign points toward something without presenting it, while a portrait can make its subject imaginatively present. Sartre distinguishes the empty direction of a sign from the representative function of an image. A sign can be joined to a later perception; an image is already a filled, though incomplete, way of reaching its object. A changing function The same visible material can be read as a thing, a sign, or image matter. Consciousness’s stance, not the material alone, determines which function it serves.

The Mental Image Returns

Toward Psychic Matter The remaining problem After portraits, drawings, and patterns, Sartre returns to the mental image, where no external object remains to inspect once imaging consciousness ends. Its representative matter vanishes along with the act. Reflection can establish that such matter functions, but it cannot directly inventory its components. The account must therefore move from certainty toward probability. A new stage of inquiry The transition opens Part II, where knowledge, feeling, movement, and language are examined as possible contributors to the image’s material.

Opening of Part I, Chapter 2

Early in Part I, Chapter 2

At the end of Part I, Chapter 2