Philosophy of Imposture

In 2000, the celebrated French writer Emmanuel Carrère wrote a book about the astonishing story of the imposter Jean-Claude Roman (Carrère: 2000). He was a false doctor, who in the end got trapped by his own lies and drove his family into a tragic death. Imposters fascinate and upset. They fascinate us for the flexibility with which they seem able to adopt and imitate various characters. They are “artists of persuasion” (Konnikova: 2016) who make us believe of really being someone. However at the same moment, they upset us, because their persuasion is built on nothing. Their life is something other than a dissimulation of something they try to keep hidden: it is pure simulation. It hides nothing. Their personality seems an usurpation of the life of others

Keywords:imposture, false fiction, imagination, forgery

Disciplines:Phenomenology, Philosophical anthropology