Imagination and make-believe
So far, we have discussed imagination, play-acting, make-believe and
pretence, without really distinguishing between them. I don’t intend to
draw careful distinctions between all of these terms, but some distinctions
are relevant to our discussion of theatre. First, I’ll say something about
imagination, then about make-believe.
Imagination
Philosophers writing about imagination have had a wide variety of targets
in mind. First, one can talk about the imagination of the artist–in other
words, her creativity or ingenuity. We might praise the imagination of,
say, Goethe or Strindberg; and in doing so, we suggest that there’s
something innovative about them–that they have created new genres, or
that they are notable for writing in an unusual variety of styles. This
focus on the creative imagination of the artistfinds particular attention in
Kant’sCritique of the Power of Judgement[46–50]. However, our current
focus is the audience at a theatrical performance, and clearly this is not
the notion of imagination that we want. When I watch a play, I engage
imaginatively with what the author and actors produce; but I myself am
not thereby being especially imaginative or creative.
A second notion of imagination is not concerned with artworks in
particular, but rather with our everyday engagement with the world.
When we watch a plane disappearing into a cloud, we do not immedi-
ately assume that the plane hasreallydisappeared; we are able, instead, to
‘fill in the gaps’in our perception. This‘filling in the gaps’is a kind of
imagination: the plane-watcher uses the information she has, but adds
some suppositions of her own and draws a sensible conclusion. Hence
Hume, for example, holds that the imagination is what, in everyday
situations,‘convinces us of the existence of external objects when absent
from the senses’.^45 The key point about this kind of imagination is that it
is not only typical, but it might even be necessary for everyday func-
tioning. Weneedto think that objects that disappear from sight are still
there–not being able to do so would make (e.g.) riding a bike down a
street a difficult exercise. Note that this kind of imaginative engagement
with what is not directly present to the senses can extend beyond the
plane behind the cloud–that was merely the simplest case. One could
argue that this imagination is in play when we think about past events or
about people who are far away.
This kind of imagination is not about making things up that aren’t
true, or pretending; it’s a necessary feature of correctly understanding
the world: if you imagine the plane moving in the cloud, you might
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