ABSTRACT
This chapter describes two cases of Monday morning rituals from Germany and India observed by our Berlin research team. It introduces the philosophy of the As If of Hans Vaihinger as a consequence of this theoretical perspective and as an extension of it. Using the philosophy of the As If perspective, we can now specify the function of rituals and, analyze the Monday morning school rituals. With both forms of Monday morning rituals, something completely unreal is created: an image of the adult word that is actually not at all what it represents. Both are concerned with the appropriate way of dealing with or of expressing emotions in the adult world. And while communicating about their emotional moments of the weekend in an appropriate way — and this means in an adult way of doing so — they act “as if” all of them were adults.
