Sartre and Ricoeur on Productive Imagination

Commenting on J ean‐ P aul S artre's theory of imagination, P aul R icoeur argues that S artre fails to address the productive nature of imaginative acts. According to R icoeur, S artre's examples show that he thinks of imagination in mimetic terms, neglecting its innovative and creative dimensions. Imagination, R icoeur continues, manifests itself most clearly in fiction, wherein new meaning is created. By using fiction as the paradigm of imaginative activity, R icoeur is able to argue against S artre that the essence of imagination lies not in its ability to reproduce absent objects, but rather in the ability to transform reality through creative acts. Motivated by the intuition that S artre the writer could not have forgotten to address such crucial dimensions of imagination, I examine S artre's philosophical and literary work, showing that not only does he develop a notion of productive imagination, he also puts this notion to work by articulating the relationship between imagination, narrative, and identity formation, well before R icoeur advanced his narrative‐identity theory. I argue that S artre, like R icoeur and M ac I ntyre, another representative of narrative‐theory whose criticism of S artre I address in this essay, views imagination and narrativity as necessary conditions for the formation of a coherent and meaningful sense of self.