Books by Robert Pfaller

For many illusions, it is easy to find owners people who proudly declare that they believe in things such as life after death, human reason, and self-regulation of financial markets. Yet there are also different kinds of illusions at work, for example, in art: trompe l'oeil-painting pleases its observers with ';anonymous illusions' illusions where it is not entirely clear who exactly it is that should be deceived.Anonymous illusions offer a universal pleasure principle within culture: they are present in games, sport, design, eroticism, manners, charm, beauty, etc. However it seems that this pleasure principle is increasingly subjected to misrecognition: the proud proprietors of certain illusions are no longer capable of recognizing that they too follow anonymous illusions. As a consequence, they mistake happy, polite others for nave idiots or ';savages' as owners of stupid illusions; and consider their happiness an obscene intrusion as something in which they could never share.Pfaller explores the strange properties of these shared illusions, and finds that they have a central and crucial role in our cultureand we need to better understand them in order to protect the public sphere.