Perspectives, Fictions, Errors, Play

Abstract In a climate in which the idea of ‘fictionalism’ as a philosophy of this or that is flourishing, it is natural to salute Nietzsche as an honourable ancestor. For Nietzsche’s work is shot through with references to the fictions which in his view make up at least a part of the machinery with which the mind copes with its world. The notion of fictions stands alongside the three other words in my title, in apparent amity— at least, it often seems to be a lottery whether Nietzsche will announce any particular one of them as the key to some diagnosis of our situation, or some recommendation for the men of the future.