Clement Rosset (again)
To escape the fear of death, human beings flee from reality and worship something that is not there. In place of the world as it is, we invent a “duplicate“ or a “double”, a parallel universe which functions as a phantom rival to the world that exists, a desperate compensation for the suffering that is associated with an acceptance of reality. This “duplicate” takes on all kinds of forms, from the cuckolded husband who, because he cannot bear the truth, persuades himself that his wife is faithful, to the critic of globalization who thinks “another world” is possible, and finally including the metaphysical philosopher who proves that reality, as in “real life”, is always “somewhere else”.
