Book excerpt: Fictionalism confronts the dual epistemological nature of education. In this book, Johan Dahlbeck argues that all education, at bottom, concerns a striving for truth initiated through fictions. This foundational aporia is then interrogated and made sense of via Hans Vaihinger’s philosophy of ‘as if’ and Spinoza’s peculiar form of exemplarism. Using a variety of fictional examples, Dahlbeck investigates the different dimensions of educational fictionalism, from teacher exemplarism to the basic educational fictions necessary for getting started in education in the first place. Fictionalism will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in the philosophical foundations of education.