ABSTRACT
Imagination was central to J. P. Sartre’s philosophical work throughout his career. It had been the topic of his dissertation submitted for the diplome d’etudes superieure degree in 1927. This chapter discusses both puzzles through analysis of Sartre’s distinction between genuine and imaginary affectivity. It argues that the rich theory of imagination identified through this analysis is implicitly committed to a developmental perspective that makes it responsive to animal psychology and developmental psychology, as well as to cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Sartre is committed to the second and third characteristics being inseparable. For he holds that imagination has them both, perception has the negations of both, and there are no other kinds of experience that present an object in spatiotemporal profile. Since he has already included affectivity in his analyses of other forms of imagination, its role in mental imagery allows Sartre to treat affectivity and information from on as the only essential ingredients of imagination.
