Valerie Bernard

Sartre on imaginative presence

Philosophy and the Mind Sciences November 5, 2025 Valerie Bernard

The question as to whether imaginative experience involves phenomenal presence is increasingly a subject of philosophical debate. In contrast to many contemporary thinkers who hold that waking imaginative experience and dreaming involve a feeling of presence, Jean-Paul Sartre (1940/2004, 1936/2012) argues that the phenomenology of presence accompanies perception only. Sartre thus rejects both...