Sartre, bréhier and the psychological life: A history of images

peer reviewedHow can the influence of Émile Bréhier on Jean-Paul Sartre help us better understand Sartrean phenomenology of consciousness? our inquiry exploits Sartre's unpublished thesis on "The Image in the Psychological Life: Role and nature," written in 1926-1927 under the direction of henry Delacroix and belonging to the tradition of philosophical psychology (connected with bergsonism). Firstly, we unify the two main uses of the notion of 'degradation' - in Sartre's psychophenomenology of imagination and in his phenomenological description of the psyche - by showing the intermediary role played by Bréhier's interpretation of Plotinus. Then, by comparing the early conception of imagination in Sartre with the unsung Bréhier's theory of the symbolic, we focus on a peculiar reading of the theme of the interior life (vie intérieure) by both authors and, paying attention to the kind of history of images that they sketch, we construe it as a prelude of the figure of intentional consciousness in Sartrean existentialism. © 2017 by Tijdschrift voor Filosofie. All rights reserved