Hans Vaihinger

Vaihinger was born in Nehren, Württemberg, Germany, near Tübingen, and raised in what he described as a "very religious atmosphere". He was educated at the University of Tübingen (the Tübinger Stift), Leipzig University, and the University of Berlin. ==Career==

Vaihinger became a tutor and later a philosophy professor at the University of Strasbourg. In 1884 he moved to the University of Halle, where from 1892 he was a full professor. ==Personal life and death==

By 1900 Vaihinger's health had deteriorated. His health, especially his failing eyesight, forced Vaihinger to step down from his professorship. In 1926 he suffered complete blindness. He died on December 18, 1933. ==Work==

In Die Philosophie des Als Ob (''The Philosophy of 'As if''', 1911), Vaihinger argued that human beings can never really know the underlying reality of the world, and that as a result people construct systems of thought and then assume that these match reality: they behave "as if" the world matches their models. In particular, he used examples from the physical sciences, such as protons, electrons, and electromagnetic waves. None of these phenomena have been observed directly, but science assumes and pretends that they exist, and uses observations made on these assumptions to create new and better constructs. In the preface to the English edition of his work, Vaihinger expressed his principle of fictionalism: "An 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." Fictions in this sense, however, Vaihinger considers to be only "half-fictions or semi-fictions". Rather, "real fictions" are those that "are not only in contradiction with reality but self-contradictory in themselves; the concept of the atom, for example, or the 'Ding an sich'." However, the two types "are not sharply divided from one another but are connected by transitions. Thought begins with slight initial deviations from reality (half-fictions), and, becoming bolder and bolder, ends by operating with constructs that are not only opposed to the facts but are self-contradictory." Frank Kermode's The Sense of an Ending (1967) was an early mention of Vaihinger as a useful methodologist of narrativity. He says that "literary fictions belong to Vaihinger’s category of 'the consciously false.' They are not subject, like hypotheses, to proof or disconfirmation, only, if they come to lose their operational effectiveness, to neglect." Later, James Hillman developed both Vaihinger and Adler's work with psychological fictions into a core theme of his work Healing Fiction in which he makes one of his more accessible cases for identifying the tendency to literalize, rather than "see through our meanings", with neurosis and madness. ==Critical reception and legacy==

During his own lifetime Vaihinger's works were generally well received both in Germany and abroad, especially in America. When, in 1924, his Philosophy of As If was published in English, the original 1911 book was already in its sixth edition. However, the American journalist H. L. Mencken was scathing in his criticism of the book, which he dismissed as an unimportant "foot-note to all existing systems". Vaihinger was also criticised by the Logical positivists who made "curt and disparaging references" to his work. After his death, and the intellectual sea change that followed the Second World War, Vaihinger's work received little attention from philosophers. A reappraisal of Vaihinger by the American philosopher Arthur Fine concluded that Vaihinger was actually the "preeminent twentieth-century philosopher of [scientific] modeling". == Works ==

• 1876: Hartmann, Dühring und Lange (Hartmann, Dühring and Lange) • 1881–1892: Commentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft (''Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason'') – Vol. I: 1881 / Vol. II: 1892 (2nd ed.; Vols. I–II and supplementary volume, ed. Raymund Schmidt, 1922; reprint of the 2nd ed., 1970). • 1897–1922: Kant-Studien, founder and chief editor • 1899: Kantein Metaphysiker? (Kanta Metaphysician?) • 1902: Nietzsche Als Philosoph (Nietzsche as Philosopher) • 1906: Philosophie in der Staatsprüfung. Winke für Examinatoren und Examinanden. (Philosophy in the Degree. Cues for teachers and students.) • 1911: Die Philosophie des Als Ob (''The Philosophy of 'As if''') – online Translations • 1924: ''The Philosophy of 'As if': A System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of Mankind'', translated by C. K. Ogden, first published in England by Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1924 – online. == References ==