Beyond Good and Evil · Chapter
138 explained
The narrator draws a direct parallel between dreaming and waking life, asserting that in both states we invent and imagine the people we interact with, and then immediately forget this act of creation.
What happens
The narrator draws a direct parallel between dreaming and waking life, asserting that in both states we invent and imagine the people we interact with, and then immediately forget this act of creation.
Themes in this chapter
Psychology as the Fundamental Science
The excerpt is a psychological claim about the universal process of invention and forgetting in human interaction, treating psychology as the basis for understanding social reality.
Perspectivism
Implies that our experience of others is not an encounter with an objective reality but is always an act of imaginative construction from our own perspective.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
Presents a psychological observation about the invented nature of all social intercourse, positioning himself as an analyst of human perception.
Key passages
“We do the same when awake as when dreaming: we only invent and imagine him with whom we have intercourse—and forget it immediately.”
In both waking life and dreams, we creatively construct the personas of those we engage with and then promptly forget we have done so.
Highlights the fundamental act of creation underlying all social perception and its subsequent repression.