This post is by David Simonin, director of the project entitled "Homo Fabulator: the performativity of illusory representations" (HomoFab), and editor of a new book (in French) on the power of stories. The book is called Les Fables de l'Homme (Human Fables) (Éditions Kimé 2025).
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| Book cover for Human Fables (2025) |
What if our illusions shaped reality more reliably than the truth? In the age of fake news, post-truth and virtual realities, there is no doubt that false beliefs, fictions and illusions have a profound impact on our societies. What was long perceived as a deviation to be corrected now appears to be a constant feature of human thought and behaviour.
This collective work offers a unique exploration of the power of fabulation: why do we need to tell ourselves stories, individually and collectively? What are the effects of these narratives and representations? Combining philosophy, literature, human and social sciences, the authors question the foundations of our relationship with reality. This book thus sketches the archaeology of a regime of knowledge that is prevalent today, in which illusion, far from always being the opposite of truth, becomes a structuring force with which we must contend.
The contributions address a twofold issue. On the one hand, they examine, under the term “fabulation”, the widespread tendency of human beings to delude themselves and tell stories, to themselves and to others, about themselves and the world, whether intentionally or not. On the other hand, the omnipresence of fabulation also requires us to study its real effects on human thought and behaviour, simply because such stories are believed and disseminated.
In this sense, "human fables" is to be understood in its double meaning: these fables are human because they transform their authors, and are also the stories that human beings tell about themselves. "Human fables" refers here to humankind as homo fabulator, in accordance with the hypothesis of philosophical anthropology that underlies the project.
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| David Simonin |
In the first part, entitled “Functions of Fiction”, three chapters examine some effects of fiction, whether real or supposed, personal or societal, beneficial or otherwise. The first chapter takes a diachronic approach to questioning the influence attributed to reading and writing fiction on women (Françoise Lavocat). Based on a clarification of the definition of the term fiction itself, the second chapter focuses on the self-understanding and self-determination that fiction makes possible (Gerson Reuter). The third chapter questions the ability of dystopian fiction to change society by anticipating its possible futures through the hyperbolisation of some of its present shortcomings (Valérie Stiénon).
In a second part entitled “Rewriting History”, two chapters present the contrasting and complementary views of a historian (Johann Chapoutot) and a philosopher (Eva Schürmann) on the factual and fictional elements in the writing of history as well as stories.
The third part focuses on several “Psychological Approaches to Fabulation”, with two chapters devoted respectively to the fundamental role, in William James’ psychology, of vague images in the development of beliefs which, in turn, largely determine our perception of what is real and what is not (Guido Baggio); and to confabulation, the study of whose mechanisms sheds light on the attitude prone to the adoption of conspiracy theories, but which under certain conditions can also have positive aspects (Lisa Bortolotti, Kathleen Murphy-Hollies and Matteo Mameli).
The fourth part, “Social Imagination and Legal-Political Fabulation”, extends these reflections on social psychology with a chapter devoted to the conditions that make a given social imagination possible, as well as adherence (or not) to experiences and narratives that go beyond what we are used to (Molly Andrews). Two other chapters then deal more specifically with legal and political fictions, such as the state (Hans Kelsen, translated by Christophe Bouriau) or the robot as it is granted legal personhood (Manuel Rebuschi).
The fifth and final parts, devoted to “Self-narratives and Self-staging”, will first revisit the concept of Bovarysm, conceived as the human ability to conceive of oneself as other than one is (David Simonin). The following two chapters are devoted to self-staging of an imagistic nature, through selfies studied from an archaeological perspective returning to mirror portraits (Anna Caterina Dalmasso), and through self-staging on screen in the documentary films of an anthropologist (Nathalie Luca).