Nietzsche suggests a startling criterion for truth: those ideas that are true are not so because they correspond to fact but because they enrich life. Hans Vaihinger, a disciple of Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, explores this notion in his delightfully titled The Philosophy of “As If,” completed in the 1880s, published in 1911. Like his teachers, Vaihinger maintains that we can never fully comprehend a reality composed of fleeting feelings and sensations. However, we nonetheless are constantly behaving as if our beliefs about reality were actually true. For instance, we cannot directly observe atoms, but only the field they produce. Still, we believe they exist and act accordingly, carrying out atom-based scientific projects that improve our lives. The same can be said of Kant’s triumvirate, freedom, God, and immortality; to behave as if each existed can ameliorate self and other. Likewise continuity, the future, purpose: though we cannot in any present moment prove the reality of these, we require them to thrive. They are useful fictions.
Can we make up just any fiction we’d like and call it true? No. Fictions must be “pragmatically justified” to be valid. If I think I can fly and so leap off a cliff and die, then my belief not only possesses no pragmatic use but is deadly. But if I maintain that my volunteering at a homeless shelter will merit reward in future—emotionally, psychologically, monetarily, or spiritually—and so volunteer and provide food and comfort for those that suffer, then my belief is useful for me and society. Likewise, belief in the electron can result in productive cancer research, cures for fatal viruses, our understanding of the origins and ends of the earth.
If we can’t break through our fictions to knowable fact, we can at least fabricate facts through invigorating fictions. And these fictional facts can be as harmonious and beautiful as the suppleness of our feelings and sensations will allow.