1939

1939 is the approximate date associated with the writing of “Consciousness and Imagination,” the first part of the two-part conclusion to The Imaginary. Its importance is intellectual rather than dramatic: the book situates this concluding reflection near Jean-Paul Sartre’s reading of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time in April 1939, while presenting the study of imagination as a significant stage in the development of Sartre’s ontology.

Chronological Attribution

The date is offered cautiously. The account says that “Consciousness and Imagination” was probably written last and seems contemporaneous with Sartre’s reading of Being and Time in April 1939. This provides a likely period, not a precisely established composition date; the wording preserves uncertainty about both the order of writing and the exact relation between the text and the reading.

The conclusion has two parts, and the chronological statement applies specifically to the first. The second turns to consciousness before the work of art as an irreal object. That distinction matters: the book does not establish that both parts were written in April 1939, or that every argument in the conclusion originated at the same moment.

Intellectual Context

The first conclusion moves beyond the classification of particular psychological phenomena toward a broader question: what unified understanding of human existence can psychology provide? The surrounding discussion contrasts the discipline’s diverse investigations, from perceptual illusions to the inferiority complex, with Sartre’s aim of treating the human condition as an indivisible unity. The 1939 reference therefore locates a shift in emphasis from a descriptive psychology of images to a more comprehensive account of consciousness.

That account describes consciousness as without substance and as directed beyond itself. By creating images even when their objects are absent, consciousness negates the real and makes absence central to its activity. The book retrospectively presents this analysis as preparation for the ontological drama developed in Being and Nothingness: consciousness, or being-for-itself, generates nothingness in relation to being-in-itself. The date marks a point in that intellectual trajectory, not proof that the later work’s full system was already complete.

Significance and Limits

The association with April 1939 gives the conclusion a place at the threshold between Sartre’s investigation of imagination and his later ontological concerns. Imagination is no longer treated merely as one psychological capacity among others; it becomes part of an account of how consciousness surpasses the real and relates to what is absent. The date’s significance rests on this connection between a particular study and a wider philosophical development.

The evidence does not identify a day of composition, establish a definitive manuscript chronology, or show that Sartre’s reading of Being and Time directly caused the arguments. It supports a more measured claim: the first concluding section was probably written last and appears to belong to the period of that reading in April 1939.