Filosoferen met fabels

No philosopher has used fables so extensively as Michel Serres. The fable lies at the heart of his work. This, of course, makes the French philosopher liable to accusations of irrationalism. This raises again the question whether a philosophy that is worthy of its name can or should rely on the fables that were delivered to us by authors such as Jean de la Fontaine who are not considered to belong to the philosophical tradition. In the paper, it is argued that Serres’ radical position is that we cannot come to a proper understanding of, for example, Descartes if we do not see how indebted the father of modern rationalism was to fables. As far as the fable represents a certain kind of ‘archaic’ knowledge, the fable is not a deviation or perversion from philosophy. It is rather the opposite: philosophy as such – and certainly cartesianism – is a deviation or perversion from the fable.