“One must imagine what one denies”
The Imaginary“One must imagine what one denies” states a central consequence of the book’s account of imagination: consciousness cannot negate something without giving the negated object an imagined form. The maxim links the structure of negation to freedom and to the world as a whole. Imagination is not simply a private picture added to experience; it is bound up with the way consciousness surpasses what is real and apprehends its situation.
