Imagination and the problem of freedom of consciousness: existential-ontological aspect

The paper deals with free consciousness as a defining issue of self-actualization of the thinking subject. The twentieth century has allowed us to rethink the relationship between imagination and free consciousness in a qualitatively new way. An analysis is made of consciousness ontology bases as the actual experience of the imagination through the lens and method of J.-P. Sartre. Specificity of interpretation of the essential foundations of the imagination opened new horizons to study the sources of freedom. The essence of existence for Sartre is revealed through the imagination. Imaginary consciousness is present here and now, and this is one of the theses of non-classical philosophy. Sartre contends that imagination is experiencing Nothingness which makes available the experience of the whole. His separate ideas emphasize that imagination is the being for itself in consciousness as experience of the Whole. Relationship is revealed between the existential-ontological project and the phenomenology of Husserlian immanent time. Inconsistencies are marked in interpretation of consciousness experience as imagination of the presenting absence. Free consciousness as the vision of the Other in relation to the human existing in experience is the freedom to nothingness. The consciousness situation as a choice situation can never be completed relevantly for itself without having to go into the past or, on the contrary, to remain only a wish or project. The construction of “being for itself” in the philosophy of Sartre plays a destructive role rather than the constructive as in the Hegel’s theory. J.-P. Sartre’s destruction is due to the crisis processes taking place in culture of the 20th century, the prevailing nihilism and universal loneliness arising from the mismatch of the world and the transcendent.