© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi �0.��63/�569�640-� �34�330 research in phenomenology 46 (�0 �6) 98–��6 brill.com/rp Research in Phenomenology Against the Sartrean Background: Ricoeur’s Lectures on Imagination Saulias Geniusas Chinese University of Hong Kong geniusas@cuhk.edu.hk Abstract The paper addresses Ricoeur’s critique of Sartre in light of Ricoeur’s unpublished Lectures on Imagination. I argue that Ricoeur’s critique is twofold: hermeneutical and phenomenological. The hermeneutical critique relies on two central claims, namely, that Sartre fails to distinguish productive and reproductive imagination and that this distinction is language-based. I argue that neither claim is justified. The phenome- nological critique casts doubts on Sartre’s sharp distinction between the real and the imaginary. It relies on Ricoeur’s phenomenology of painting, which offers an alterna- tive way to distinguish productive and reproductive imagination. In place of a con- clusion, I inquire into the reasons why Ricoeur, who considers imagination a theme of central philosophical importance, never wrote a separate book on imagination. I maintain that the reasons are methodological: the phenomenological and hermeneu- tical approaches to imagination are irreconcilable since the first one relies on the pri- macy of pre-predicative experience, while the second one is based on the primacy of language. Keywords productive and reproductive imagination – phenomenology – hermeneutics – Ricoeur – Sartre Here I wish to revisit Paul Ricoeur’s critique of Jean-Paul Sartre’s philoso- phy of imagination on the basis of Ricoeur’s Lectures on Imagination, which