Nietzsche on Theatricality and Imagination

Abstract

This chapter explores Friedrich Nietzsche’s account of imagination from the perspective of his distinctive version of pragmatism. The role assigned to the imagination in Kant’s epistemology and subsequent Romantic efforts to expand the scope of Kantian imagination, provides historical and conceptual context for the main argument: namely, that according to Nietzsche, all conscious experience possesses an imaginative quality explicable by what is termed its “theatrical” structure. This structure first becomes apparent when the often-overlooked linguistic dimension of Nietzsche’s pragmatism is highlighted and the inherent theatricality of consciousness is magnified in the process of dream construction. But while dream consciousness heightens and intensifies the theatricality of normal waking consciousness, the most fascinating corroborating evidence is offered by the deliberately designed performances of ancient Greek tragedies. Thus, the chapter concludes with the suggestion that the unique complexity of theater aesthetics can be most productively accommodated within Nietzsche’s pragmatic account of imagination.