Analogon

Analogon is Jean-Paul Sartre’s term for the representative medium through which Imaging consciousness intends an absent or nonexistent object. It is neither a miniature copy of that object nor a verbal sign that merely points toward it. Rather, it serves as the object’s proxy in an act that keeps the object present to consciousness while marking it as irreal. Sartre uses the concept to explain how an image can possess a kind of fullness without being confused with perception, and how drawings, bodily activity, dreams, and artworks can mediate objects that are not actually present.

Definition and structure

Sartre defines the image as an act that aims, through physical or psychic content, at an absent or nonexistent object; that content is given not simply as itself but in its representative capacity. The representative is therefore an object for consciousness, not an inner container in which the image is stored. A picture, caricature, impersonation, or mark on a wall can function as an Analogon because consciousness apprehends it as a medium for another object. The mental image follows the same general structure even though its representative content is psychic rather than an externally visible thing.

This account distinguishes the representative’s transcendence from externality. The represented object may be external, but the psychic Analogon is not thereby spatial or sensible in the same manner as that object. The Illusion of immanence arises when the externality, spatiality, and qualities of the represented thing are mistakenly transferred to its representative content. The content represents those qualities in its own way; it does not literally possess them. This distinction also prevents the image from being treated as a faint perception: an image is not a weaker version of seeing the object in person, but a different intentional relation to it.

The concept further clarifies why an image is not simply a sign. A sign can direct consciousness toward an absent object while remaining empty of that object. An image, by contrast, gives the object through a representative medium, so that it is present by proxy and yet retains a kind of nothingness. Sartre calls the internal relation between an image and its object Possession: through the Analogon, it is the object itself that appears to consciousness in an irreal mode, rather than a small likeness that stands outside it as a conventional sign.

Movement, bodily activity, and schematic images

The representative medium need not be a visible picture. Sartre argues that kinaesthetic impressions—sensations accompanying small contractions or voluntary movements—can serve as substitutes for visual form. A slight movement may represent a much more complex object or action; the movement’s representative role remains even when the drawn lines that once guided it are absent. Sartre illustrates this with an attempt to imagine a lively swing. When he tried to keep his eyes still by fixing his gaze on a book’s page number, either the eyes moved despite the effort or the swing’s movement could no longer be represented. The kinaesthetic activity helped constitute the imagined motion rather than merely accompanying an already complete mental picture.

Affective and kinaesthetic media can operate together. The affective Analogon conveys the object’s nature in a full but inexpressible way, while the kinaesthetic Analogon helps give it differentiated form, position, and direction. The two are not duplicates: one contributes an affective character, the other helps externalize and spatially articulate the imagined object. In an image, bodily activity can thus be constitutive of what appears, rather than a later reaction to it. Sartre distinguishes this constituting layer from freer responses that follow once an irreal object has been formed; the whole body may collaborate in bringing the image into being, while subsequent reactions need not add qualities to the object itself.

Schematic drawings make the distinction especially clear. A few black lines can first be organized as abstract forms through eye movements: three segments may appear as a fork, while a point and a curved line remain separate figures. A changed intention can make the same marks appear as a face. The oblique segment then reads as a forehead, another as an eyebrow, a descending line as a nose, and the point and curve as an eye and mouth. The shift does not result from the lines alone. The viewer’s bodily attitude and movements help synthesize them, including an absent connecting line enacted by carrying the gaze between separated marks. In schematic imagery, the movements projected onto the lines, rather than the lines considered by themselves, are representative elements.

This process differs from perceptual organization in the Müller-Lyer illusion. There, the figure’s structure imposes or invites eye movements, and those movements are attributed to the perceived lines as potential directions or forces. The result remains a perceived object with a newly perceived quality. Schematic images, however, do not themselves give rules for movement: knowledge directs the movements, which are projected onto the lines as hypothetical directions. If an image crystallizes, the viewer sees the represented figure while remaining aware that the movements were freely projected and that the image continues to be created. The same strokes can therefore support perception or imaging, depending on the attitude and synthesis through which they are apprehended.

Mental imagery, dreams, and belief

The mental Analogon poses a particular problem for description. When imaging consciousness ceases, its transcendent psychic content disappears with it; unlike a painted canvas or a mark on a wall, no sensible residue remains for inspection. Reflection can apprehend the object’s qualities through the Analogon while the image is formed, but it cannot independently recover the content once the act has vanished. Sartre therefore holds that phenomenological description establishes the presence and function of psychic representative content, while hypotheses about its precise nature must turn to experimental psychology and remain probable rather than certain.

The same framework explains why words and mental images cannot simply be merged. A word functions as a sign that directs consciousness toward an object; the Analogon functions as the medium through which the object appears by proxy. Sartre rejects the notion that a mental image of a horse is merely a horse in miniature serving as a sign for the thought of a horse. In his account, the image presents the horse itself in an irreal mode. Inner speech, meanwhile, is fundamentally motor rather than an image, even if it is sometimes accompanied by visual or auditory imagery. Treating image and sign as interchangeable would obscure the different ways they direct consciousness toward their objects.

Dreaming also involves representative media, but the dream is not simply a succession of mental pictures. Hypnagogic imagery, which may draw on phosphenes, muscular contractions, and inner speech, can supply material for a dream; the transition may occur through a change in attitude rather than a change in the imagery itself. In the dream, sensations can be apprehended as Analogons for other realities. A red light passing through a curtain, for example, may be taken as blood, and sounds or words may stand for different elements of the dreamed situation. The dreamer does not first perceive those sensations as ordinary objects and then form images from them. The dream is a consciousness enclosed in the imaging attitude, apprehending its materials as representatives of other realities.

Sartre’s account of hallucination likewise turns on the distinction between an image and perception, not simply on whether an image has been projected into external space. An imaged object already has its own irreal space, distinct from the shared space of perceived objects, and is given as irreal to a healthy imaging consciousness. The problem is how a person may believe in the reality of an image that is constituted as irreal. Sartre proposes that hallucination involves an alteration of belief or thesis, while maintaining that the image’s constitutive irreality cannot itself be erased. He also cautions that a patient’s later report of where a hallucination occurred may not establish that image-space and perceptual space were fused during the episode; his account treats their relation as a problem requiring care, rather than assuming that the image was simply mistaken for an ordinary perception.

Art and the public Analogon

The account extends from mental imagery to aesthetic experience. In painting, the canvas, frame, and strokes are real, but the aesthetic object manifested through them is irreal. A portrait of Charles VIII is not identical with its painted support: the depicted figure appears when consciousness takes an imaging attitude toward the canvas. Real light can illuminate the painted surface, and the material picture can be damaged, but neither change alters the illumination or fate of Charles VIII as an imaged object. Those qualities belong to the represented object’s irreal constitution, not to the material support as such.

The artist does not, on this view, transfer a private mental image into a real canvas. The painter constructs a material Analogon through which spectators can apprehend an irreal whole. Each stroke is made in relation to that whole, although the stroke remains a real mark on the support. Even colour becomes aesthetically meaningful within the represented object: a red may be apprehended as the red of a woollen rug, with its tactile character and relation to a wall’s green, rather than as an isolated sensory stimulus. In this sense, the real canvas enables the manifestation of the irreal without converting it into a real object.

The same structure applies to fiction, poetry, drama, and music. Words serve as verbal Analogons for the objects constituted by a novelist, poet, or dramatist. An actor’s body, feelings, and gestures can serve as Analogons for Hamlet’s conduct without the actor literally becoming Hamlet. The actor may be fully mobilized in the role, yet the character is not realized as an ordinary person; the performance makes the irreal figure present through real bodily means.

A musical performance offers a parallel case. A dated performance of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony is real, but the symphony apprehended in aesthetic contemplation is not identical with that event. It can be heard again in a different performance, and the performance may succeed or fail in manifesting it. The orchestra’s sounds are its Analogon: to apprehend the symphony through them requires an imaging attitude that treats the real sounds as representatives. The work is experienced as present yet out of reach, with an internal succession that is not simply the dated passage of the concert. When a performance ends, the return to everyday reality is therefore not a movement between two locations but a shift from imaging to realizing consciousness. Across these examples, Analogon names the hinge by which an irreal object can appear through a real or psychic medium without collapsing into it.