Counterfactuals

Here’s a counterfactual: if this book were less good, it would be easier to review. It’s quite rare to come across a book like this which is, quite simply, for the humanities. If we imagine a world where this book had no audience, where, say, the meanings of Petrarch’s climb and Ignatius’ indecision were forgotten, it would be a much colder and less wise one. * Times Higher Education * [These] books are sophisticated straws in a rising wind. * Times Literary Supplement (joint-reviewed with Things That Didin't Happen) * [These books] add up to more than the sum of two deeply meditated, extensively researched projects ... [They] invite more interesting questions than I can count. * London Review of Books (joint-reviewed with Telling It Like It Wasn't) * Christopher Prendergast’s wide-ranging and philosophically informed investigation of counterfactuals is a revelation. Counterfactual conjectures, we learn, wend their way through centuries of Western thought on numerous topics: the vagaries of chance, the mysteries of time, and the fragility of personal identity. They link metaphysical speculation to utopian longing and the pain of personal regret. Prendergast’s encounters with them reveal both their ubiquity and their strangeness. -- Catherine Gallagher, Emerita Eggers Professor of English Literature, University of California Berkeley, USA Prendergast uses the rich idea of counterfactuals as a point of departure for a deft exploration of key works of literature and philosophy. This is an intellectually adventurous and highly stimulating book. -- Andrew Huddleston, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Birkbeck, University of London, UK 'In this witty and erudite book, Prendergast offers a startling range of reflections and analyses of the realm of possibility, bringing his command of sources from fiction and science, history and philosophy, to bear on fundamental questions of reality and truth, persuasion and evidence. The work offers an indispensable guide and caution to many of contemporary society's most pressing obsessions and errors: the strange appeal of fantasy and the power of the fake. In raising so clearly the ways to deal with the puzzle of what might have been, whether with regret or with relief, this is a major accomplishment of a literary critic and scholar at the top of his game. -- Simon Schaffer, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, UK