
Life is a big cosmic joke with a bad punchline, isn’t it?
One day, you’re born, clueless and screaming; the next, you’re staring at your reflection wondering if the whole thing’s some poorly-scripted improv show.
The universe doesn’t send you a rulebook. So, you make one up.
“As If,” Hans Vaihinger’s magnum opus, doesn’t just wink at this absurdity—it leans in with a shot of whiskey and says, “Yeah, buddy, it’s all a sham. But what else do you have?”
It’s fiction we live by, Vaihinger argues. The stories we invent—whether it’s the myth of true love, the market economy, or even the concept of “self”—are tools to navigate this colossal mess called life.
Vaihinger gave us the survival manual.
And you know what? We need it more than ever.
Explaining Vaihinger to a Stupid Bro
“Alright, bro,” I say, leaning against a wall covered in bad graffiti, “imagine you’re playing a game. Let’s say Monopoly. In real life, you know that colorful money is garbage. But when you play, you act as if it’s real.
Why? To keep the game going. That’s Vaihinger. Life’s a Monopoly game, and all these rules? Made-up. But you follow them because it’s easier than sitting in the corner and crying about how fake it all is.”
“Wait,” the bro interrupts, “so we’re all lying?”
“Not lying. Pretending. There’s a difference. You know Santa isn’t real, but isn’t Christmas more fun when you act as if he is?”
That’s it. Vaihinger in a nutshell. Pretend it matters, even if deep down you know it doesn’t.
What is Vaihinger’s “As If” Philosophy?
Vaihinger’s philosophy is built around fictionalism, the idea that we construct beliefs and frameworks not because they are true, but because they are useful.
Truth? Overrated. What matters is whether a concept works in the messy business of living.
Key Aspect | Explanation |
---|---|
Fictions | Ideas we know are false but adopt anyway. |
Purpose of Fictions | Simplify life and make the world navigable. |
Examples | Morality, money, laws, even math. |
Vaihinger wasn’t saying we should burn it all down.
Quite the opposite. He argued we’re stuck with these fictions because they’re the best tools we’ve got.
No one climbs Mount Everest questioning gravity every five minutes. You just deal with it.
Social Media: The Greatest ‘As If’ We’ve Ever Made
Here’s the thing about social media: we all know it’s bullshit.
We all know it’s a polished, curated dumpster fire where people show off their best angles, their “perfect” lives, while hiding the deep, gnawing emptiness underneath.
Yet, what do we do? We scroll. We click. We comment. Because it’s easier than facing the fact that we’re all just lying to each other.
We’re all pretending as if it matters.
You ever stopped to think about how everyone’s got their “highlight reel” up there?
The vacations, the new car, the perfect family photos in some pretend world where nobody ever gets into a fight or drinks too much.
But you know what? None of it’s real. It’s like a bad movie script with a soundtrack that’s supposed to make you feel something, but it doesn’t. It’s all smoke and mirrors. But we buy into it. Because pretending it’s real is less painful than admitting it’s a load of crap.
That’s Vaihinger’s whole deal. We create these fictions—like the perfect life on Instagram—because the alternative is too damn bleak.
If we didn’t pretend that those shiny little squares meant something, if we didn’t act as if we’re all doing better than we are, we’d have to deal with the existential void of our own insignificance.
We’re all actors in this digital play, and none of us really know the script. But we play the part because, goddamn, what else is there to do?
So we smile for the camera, upload that “candid” photo that’s anything but candid, and convince ourselves we’re connected to people we barely know.
The truth?
We’re just playing a game, just like Vaihinger said. It’s all a fiction. But the sad, ugly part? We can’t stop. Because deep down, we know that if we stop pretending, we might just be left staring into the void, alone, without the buffer of fake likes and algorithmic validation.
And that’s a nightmare we can’t wake up from.
So here we are, scrolling through the feed like zombies, acting as if it means something, when in reality, it’s all just a sick joke.
And yet, none of us wants to be the one to admit it. Because that would mean looking ourselves in the mirror and asking why the hell we’re still playing a game we know is rigged.
Critical Reception: Why They Didn’t Get It
When Philosophy of As If came out in English in 1924, Vaihinger was already riding the wave of his book’s sixth edition.
The Germans were on board with this strange new way of thinking, and so were many across the world, especially in America. They saw the value in his approach, the humor in taking life’s nonsense seriously.
But then came Mencken. That American journalist couldn’t stand the sight of Vaihinger’s book and tossed it aside as little more than a footnote in the grand philosophical saga. “Unimportant,” he said.
Makes you wonder if Mencken had ever been hit with an existential crisis and was just too proud to admit it. But, hey, that’s the nature of intellectual circles, right? Everybody needs their own little niche, their own sense of superiority.
Then, you’ve got the logical positivists. Those folks were so obsessed with facts, they probably thought the only thing real in the world was the sound of their own pompous droning.
They dismissed Vaihinger like a bad review of their pet philosophy. To them, if it didn’t add up with hard data, it wasn’t worth a damn.
After Vaihinger died and the world went into post-war chaos, his ideas took a backseat.
A generation focused on rebuilding—no time for existential pondering. But somehow, writers like John Kermode and psychologists like George Kelly saw something in Vaihinger’s work that could help explain how humans need their fictions to survive.
In the years that followed, Vaihinger’s influence crept back in. Arthur Fine, an American philosopher, even gave Vaihinger a reappraisal, calling him the “preeminent twentieth-century philosopher of modeling.”
That’s the irony, isn’t it? The guy gets knocked down by the so-called thinkers of his time, only to be resurrected when the world needed his ideas most.
Today, his work is seen as a pillar for the booming fictionalism movement in science. Funny how life works, huh?
Why “As If” Is a Lifeline in Modern Chaos
Imagine living without Vaihinger’s fictions today. No money. No relationships based on trust. No belief that effort equals reward. Without the as if, we’d unravel faster than a cheap sweater.
Here’s a thought experiment: Consider social media. We act as if the approval of strangers matters. It doesn’t, but without that validation, the whole platform crumbles.
Similarly, we act as if the world’s leaders know what they’re doing. If you stop believing that fiction, good luck getting out of bed.
A Darkly Funny Conclusion
So, what’s the moral of the story? Fake it. Pretend it matters. Be the Monopoly player who cares about landing on Park Place, even when you know it’s all plastic and cardboard.
But here’s the kicker—Vaihinger didn’t think pretending would make you happy. He thought it would make you functional.
And maybe, just maybe, in the functionality, you’d find a sliver of peace.
Take Einstein, for example. He acted as if the speed of light was constant, even when the math made his head spin. That fiction birthed modern physics.
Or think about J.K. Rowling. She wrote a story about a boy wizard acting as if love conquers all. Millions found meaning in that fiction.
Life doesn’t care if you make it out alive. So, invent a reason to care, act as if it matters, and keep rolling the dice.
Or don’t. Just don’t blame Hans Vaihinger when the board flips over.
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