Foreword to the Routledge Classics Edition Michael Rosenthal
General Introduction
Part 1: Basic Principles
General Introductory Remarks on Fictional Constructs
A. The Enumeration and Division of Scientific Fictions
B. The Logical Theory of Scientific Fictions
C. Contributions to the History and Theory of Fictions
D. Consequences for the Theory of Knowledge
Part 2: Amplified Study of Special Problems
1. Artificial Classification
2. Further Artificial Classifications
3. Adam Smith's Method in Political Economy
4. Bentham's Method in Political Science
5. Abstractive Fictional Methods in Physics and Psychology
6. Condillac's Imaginary Statue
7. Lotze's 'Hypothetical Animal'
8. Other Examples of Fictitious Isolation
9. The Fiction of Force
10. Matter and Materialism as Mental Accessories
11. Abstract Concepts as Fictions
12. General Ideas as Fictions
13. Summational, Nominal, and Substitutive Fictions
14. Natural Forces and Natural Laws as Fictions
15. Schematic Fictions
16. Illustrative Fictions
17. The Atomic Theory as a Fiction
18. Fictions in Mathematical Physics
19. The Fiction of Pure Absolute Space
20. Surface, Line, Point, etc., as Fictions
21. The Fiction of the Infinitely Small
22. The History of the Infinitesimal Fiction.
23. The Meaning of the' As If' Approach
24. The Fictive Judgment
25. The Fiction contrasted with the Hypothesis
Part 3: Historical Confirmations
A. Kant’s Use of the ‘As If’ Method
B. Forberg, The Originator of the Fichtean Atheism-Controversy, and his Religion of As-If
C. Lange's 'Standpoint of the Ideal'
D. Nietzsche and his Doctrine of Conscious Illusion.
Index
Biography
Hans Vaihinger (1852–1933) was born near Tübingen in Germany. He made important contributions to epistemology, the philosophy of science and mathematics, and to the historiography of philosophy. Vaihinger produced groundbreaking work on Kant’s philosophy, as well as one of the first serious philosophical commentaries on Nietzsche. He is best known as the father of the philosophical theory of fictionalism, which he sets out in his most famous book, The Philosophy of ‘As If’, and his work also influenced the philosophical movement of pragmatism.
