The Stories We Believe in
We all believe in stories. Stories about ourselves, stories about the world around us, about the societies and communities we are part of, about our histories, and so forth. We tend not to think of these stories as βstoriesβ, however, because we hold them true β thatβs what it means to believe something: to hold it true β and we tend to think of stories as untrue. But at least some of them are untrue. We donβt all believe the same things, so at least some of us must be wrong. Furthermore, many of the stories we believe in β...
Death, Masculinity, and Hegemony
βAt the center of the symbolic order is the abhorrence of death,β writes Odile Strik in the conclusion of her short essay The Symbolic Order of Life and Manhood. The βsymbolic orderβ of the title connects death and masculinity, and (supposedly) structures the way most people understand reality. The essay is terse and almost poetic, and only presents a rough sketch of this symbolic order, but it deals with a number of important themes β such as masculinity, life and death, and cultural hegemony β and it deserves credit for bringing those themes together. This article is a (long) commentary...
Fictionalism β or: Vaihinger, Scheffler, and KΓΌbler-Ross at the End of the World
In 1911 the now almost forgotten German philosopher Hans Vaihinger published Die Philosophie des Als Ob (The Philosophy of βAs ifβ) in which he argued for something approaching global fictionalism. In the preface to the second English edition of his book he wrote: The principle of Fictionalism . . . is as follows: βAn idea whose theoretical untruth or incorrectness, and therewith its falsity, is admitted, is not for that reason practically valueless and useless; for such an idea, in spite of its theoretical nullity may have great practical importance.β Fictionalism is the view that claims in some area of...