ABSTRACT
The conclusions reached in Chapter 3 about political utopianism are developed into a more concrete program for cultural criticism and political action. An examination of the “myth” of prepolitical property rights serves as an example of one way in which a set of false but politically efficacious illusions might come to outlive their usefulness. Some remarks are offered regarding the contemporary debate about ‘coercive’ and ‘libertarian’ political paternalism, and the position defended here is characterized as being intermediate between them. In closing, the book’s central claims about the political value of simulated experience are compared to other philosophical accounts that have been given of the relative merits of transparency and deception in politics, with special reference to Plato.
