As an imaginative writer Sartre is fascinated by the role of imagination in the creative process. Moreover his critical, psychological and philosophical writings witness to a constant meditation on the function and status of the imaginary. In his exploration of the relationship between mind and world, the role attributed to the imagination is at least as great as that of perception: imagination is, in Sartre's view, constitutive of the ‘world’ as we know it. It appears, moreover, as the correlative of the freedom of human consciousness; and it is this which permits Sartre to bring his interest in art within his overriding preoccupation with human liberty and political commitment.

But Sartre's attitude to the imaginary is nonetheless ambiguous: imagination permits man to overcome his embourbement in reality, it allows his pour soi to escape the toils of the en soi, it is vital to any project of change; yet it can also alienate that very liberty it makes possible, leading man to deny the real and to value fantasy above reality. ‘L'imaginaire pur et la praxis sont difficilement compatibles’ (Sit II, 324). The ambiguity of Sartre's attitude to imagination is reflected in his literary criticism. It led him initially to establish a radical distinction between ‘pure’ art and ‘committed’ art which he spent the rest of his life trying to attenuate.