Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
The Imaginary
The phenomenological psychology of imagination — Sartre's 1940 analysis of imaginative consciousness as the unique mode of consciousness
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | The Imaginary (Early (preceding Being and Nothingness)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Singular |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | None |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
The Imaginary
The temporal structure of imaginative consciousness — distinct from perceptual time.
Space
The Imaginary
The imaginary space — quasi-observational, not real-perceptual.
Matter
The Imaginary
The absent objects posited by imagination as opposed to the present objects of perception.
Observer
The Imaginary
The imagining consciousness — singular, embodied, active in positing its object as absent.
Energy
The Imaginary
The imaginative energies of consciousness — distinct from perceptual energies.
Information
The Imaginary
The constituted content of the imagined object; lacking the inexhaustible richness of the perceived.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The Imaginary's relation to subsequent Sartrean existentialism (Being and Nothingness especially) is the central interpretive question. The book has been less widely read than Being and Nothingness but contemporary analytic philosophy of imagination has rehabilitated it as a major phenomenological resource.