L'Imagination, by Jean-Paul Sartre (Presses Universitaire de France, Paris, 1950)
p. 122/9-11
[Naturally we should accept the existence of perceptible contents in the perception. But one would recognise, by this very fact, that the order of their succession is strictly independent of consciousness.] 'But...consciousness' double noted
p. 122/11-24
[And in fact, I am not master of seeing a hat on this peg or a piano instead of this armchair. The appearance of perceptible contents would therefore remain governed by a certain type of association. It is what Husserl expresses when saying that the principle of connection of the perceptible contents is a 'passive genesis by association' whose essential form is temporal flow. The psychological consciousness would not be able to direct this succession; but all consciousness being action, it 'notices' it, as Spaier says. With this noticing, of which the structures must be the object of a special description, the perception of the external world appears.]: If this were so, then bodily action (as opposed to mental action) would be impossible.
p. 124/30-52
[If one comes and says, thereafter, that the thought goes to fetch images, the consequence is unavoidable: one transforms the thought into a material force.] (psychokinesis): P.K.
p. 125/6-12
[In fact, if I can lift this book or this cup, it is because I am an organism, i.e. a body subject to the same laws of inertia. The very fact that I can set my thumb against my four fingers by an act of prehension already supposes all the mechanism.]: Sartre's mistake. I am not an organism. My body, in this sense, is 'pour autrui'; it is an inert object, not subject.
p. 125/20-22
[When one says that thought evokes, sets aside, that consciousness selects, one speaks in a figurative sense.] 'one speaks in a figurative sense' u/l: Why?
p. 126/2-3
[The only way of existing for consciousness is to be conscious of its existence.]: A half truth—a consciousness cannot have itself as object (even non-thétique), but only another layer of consciousness.
p. 151/10-13
[Black lines serve as well for constituting the image 'Knight' as for the perception 'Black marks on a white a page.']: No. In the first case there are no lines, only the image. This opinion is S's fundamental mistake, which he never afterwards corrects.
