Abstract

Through using the existential models of the imagination and the emotion as put forth by Sartre, we are able to create an account of emotions that are imagined rather than real. Through this delineation of characteristics of emotions that are fabricated, we gain insight into acts of consciousness such as the appreciation and creation of fiction, or judging an other in a way that addresses the emotional sense of the scenario alongside the factual data. We also begin to understand the process by which we are able to address emotions in a theoretical yet affective sense. ;In order to establish a phenomenological description of imagined emotions that is broader than Sartre's theories alone, we examine some of the work done by Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann. Their approaches to emotion through treatises on ethics provide accounts of emotion that help to broaden the description of emotion, and so help expand the concept of imagined emotion. ;To gain a sense of imagination as a creative faculty, and to expose some of its powers, we turn first to the writings of Kant. He turned attention from the mere replicative capabilities of imagination and developed the description of its ability to create. We then look to Sartre to round out the account of the imagination. By bringing emotion in as the object of an intention of the imagination, we start to see how unreal emotions play roles in acts of consciousness, including empathy and sympathy. This creation of emotion as unreal ties it directly to the will of the imagining subject, similar to any other image. ;The result is that we find emotions as objects of imagination become more easily controlled and manipulated. We are then able to place them within imagined subjects engaged in fictitious situations at will, for purposes of entertainment, artistic expression, judgement of action, or comprehension of emotional acts of consciousness