Transcendence of the representative

Transcendence of the representative is the principle that the medium through which an image aims at an object must itself be an object for consciousness, without thereby becoming an external, spatial thing. The distinction separates the image’s analogon from what it represents: an image can present an absent or nonexistent object through psychic content, but that content does not inherit the object’s sensible qualities. The principle clarifies how mental images differ from perceptions and signs, and why artistic works can make imaginary objects present without turning them into real ones.

Definition and Scope

An image is an act that aims, through physical or psychic content, at an absent or nonexistent object. In a mental image, that content has no external location: unlike a portrait, caricature, or spot on a wall, it is not something seen between other objects, at a particular height or to one side. Yet the content cannot be treated as an invisible, private ingredient that consciousness merely contains. In imaging consciousness, the object aimed at is apprehended through an analogon, and that representative medium is itself constituted as an object for consciousness. This requirement is what the principle calls the transcendence of the representative.

The term marks a distinction, not a transfer of externality. The represented thing may be external, but its mental analogon is not. Confusing the two produces the illusion of immanence: spatiality and sensible qualities belonging to the thing represented are mistakenly assigned to the psychic content that represents it. The content represents those qualities in its own way; it does not literally possess them. Thus an image of a thing is neither that thing entering consciousness nor a miniature perception located alongside the objects around the viewer.

The Mental Analogon and Its Limits

The principle also sets a limit on introspection. With a painted portrait, the canvas remains after the imaging act has ceased, so its sensible features can be examined and may help reconstruct the analogon. The mental image leaves no comparable residue. When the imaging consciousness is annihilated, its transcendent content disappears with it, and reflective description cannot recover that content as an independent object.

The alternatives are correspondingly strict. If the image is formed, its content is known through the analogon, whether the imaging consciousness is unreflective or reflective; the object’s qualities are apprehended through that medium. If the image is not formed, its content is no longer available. One can therefore establish that mental imagery involves psychic content functioning as an analogon without treating that content as a separately observable inner picture. This explains why comparing the loudness of a mental sound directly with a perceived sound misconstrues the image: the image is not a weaker perception whose volume can be measured against the stimulus.

Difference from Perception and Schematic Figures

The distinction matters because perception and imaging consciousness do not simply combine to complete one another. A real table and an imagined Pierre belong to radically distinct consciousnesses: when the irreal Pierre surges up, the table under the viewer’s eyes leaves the scene. The image therefore cannot be inserted into perception as a sensory supplement. Perception may include unformulated intentions that enrich the object, such as an ashtray’s unseen underside and its relation to the table, but these intentions adhere to the perceived object rather than positing a separate imaginary one. The account of perception developed by Köhler, Wertheimer, and Koffka offers another route to explaining how stable forms persist through changes of position, without assimilating images to sensations.

Schematic drawings show how an image can arise through bodily and intentional activity without the drawn lines simply containing a picture. Three segments, a point, and a sinuous line can first organize as abstract forms on a white sheet; under an imaging intention, the same marks can be read as a face. The figure’s surrounding white space then changes function: one side is taken as filled volume, the other as empty ground. Eye movements trace the lines, supply an absent connection, and help animate the arrangement. In schematic images, unlike forms that impose movements as perceptual rules, knowledge directs the eye movements and they remain spontaneous. Their directions are projected onto the lines as imaged properties; the image crystallizes only if a figure appears, and the viewer still knows that those vector-like qualities have been freely projected. The representative elements are therefore not simply the black lines but the movements projected onto them. This case reinforces the distinction between a sensible support and the imaging activity through which something is represented.

Art and the Irreality of the Aesthetic Object

The principle extends from mental images to art. A canvas and its real layers of paint are not the same object as the depicted Charles VIII. The aesthetic object appears when consciousness converts to an imaging attitude; it is not available to a realizing consciousness that attends only to the canvas and frame. Nor does the artist first make a private mental image and then transfer that image into reality. Brushstrokes, impasto, canvas grain, and varnish are real, but the object of aesthetic appreciation is an irreality manifested through this material analogon. The painting remains a material thing that is visited by the painted object whenever a spectator adopts the imaging attitude.

This account changes how artistic qualities are understood. Matisse’s red may give sensory pleasure in isolation, but its aesthetic force belongs to the irreal whole in which it appears, such as the red of a wool rug near a table. Its tactile and material implications, and its relation to a green wall, contribute to the depicted ensemble rather than making the aesthetic object a real patch of colour. Even a cubist painting that does not imitate familiar things can manifest an irreal ensemble of forms with density, matter, and depth. The canvas remains an analogon; the objects manifested through it do not exist on the canvas or elsewhere in the world.

Fiction, drama, and music follow the same logic. Verbal analogons manifest the irreal objects of a novel, poem, or play. An actor uses his body, feelings, strength, and gestures as analogons for Hamlet; even real tears are apprehended as the character’s irreal tears. The character is not realized in the actor; rather, the actor is irrealized in the character. Likewise, a performance of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony is not identical with the dated concert event. The listener can apprehend the symphony itself across different performances, while the auditorium and musicians recede from attention. Across these arts, the medium may be physically present, but the aesthetic object is constituted by imaging consciousness as irreal. Transcendence of the representative thus explains both the medium’s necessary role and the decisive gap between what is materially there and what the work makes present.