Say who everyone is as you go along - Faculty of Philosophy ...

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'Why could the world which is of any concern to us - not be a fiction? (BGE para 34
p.66)
Rather as someone reading a novel or watching a play is immersed in a world that is
not real, so we in our daily lives are preoccupied with a world that concerns us that is
not real. Nietzsche is suggesting that we live in an imaginary world.
Now, there is no reason to take this to mean that the ordinary physical objects
and the other people who surround us exist only in our imaginations. Nietzsche does
not hold that and, so far as I can tell, no philosopher has held that. However, what we
take the world of objects and people to be is something that is only imaginary. We
project onto the world our own hopes and fears, our desires and limitations. We try to
use the world as a means to our own ends and this largely takes the form of
perceiving it or conceiving it as a means to our ends. Nietzsche thinks we live out our
lives in this imaginary or fictitious way. Much of our mental time is taken up with
hoping, fearing, phantasising, worrying, in ways that correspond to very little outside
our minds.
Nietzsche is aware of a possible limitation of the analogy with works of fiction.
A work of fiction has an author, but one is not in any clear or direct sense the author
of the imaginary world in which one lives out one's life. Nietzsche says:
'And he who then objects: "but to the fiction there belongs an author?" - could he not
be met with the round retort: why?' (BGE para 34 p. 66)
From the fact that a work of fiction has an author it does not follow that that author is
an original creator. An originator causes to exist something original, something
without precedent, perhaps even without partial precedent. An originator creates
something ex nihilo. An originator creates perhaps with freedom and undetermined
spontaneity. An originator is a point of origin from which something emanates. Now,
even if we are the authors of our own imaginary life-worlds, and even if a writer is
the author of a work of fiction, it is doubtful that either is an originator in this very
strong sense. The causal chain that runs from the author to his imaginary product has
an origin that predates his work (if it has any kind of origin). A creator is caused to
create. A creator is caused to create what he creates.
Nietzsche is not an idealist because he denies that only the mental is real. He
does not think our imaginary world is the only world, or the real world. It is
erroneous because it contrasts with the real, true, or practical world. It is a fiction
because it is not a fact. Nevertheless, only our imaginary world is given to us as real:
'Granted that nothing is "given" as real except our world of desires and passions
[...]'(BGE para 36 p.66)
Nietzsche's claim is ambiguous between the thesis that no one is ever directly
acquainted with anything except the contents of their own minds and, on the other