Truth

Front Cover

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Series Page

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Title Page

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Copyright

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Contents

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pp. v-vi

Introduction

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pp. 1-14

The nature of truth and the human capacity to have it, to retain it, and to achieve more of it are topics that have preoccupied philosophers at least since the moment when the goddess told Parmenides that she would teach him “all things, both the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth, and the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true reliance.”¹ ...

1. Aristotle’s Door

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pp. 15-39

Aristotle provides a robust or substantial account of truth. A robust or substantial account of truth displays and explains truth as a fundamental and ineliminable datum for philosophical inquiry. This datum pertains to the real in its intelligibility, to the cognitive agent, and to the right relation of these to one another. ...

2. A More “Exact Grasp” of the Soul?: Tripartition in the Republic and Dialectic in the Philebus

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pp. 40-101

The project of this essay is to pursue the “truth” in a Platonic sense in a central region of Platonic inquiry. How may we win the deepest disclosure of the embodied soul? In what terms and by what course of reflection may we bring the embodied soul to light in its own, most genuine being? ...

3. Truth, Creation, and Intelligibility in Anselm, Grosseteste, and Bonaventure

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pp. 102-126

What I should like to pursue as the theme of this essay is the following line of interpretation: the idea of truth as expounded in Anselm, Grosseteste, and Bonaventure is, on the one hand, developed so as to accommodate the biblical doctrine of creation, but, on the other, has features that are more or less directly continuous ...

4. Truth in the Middle Ages: Its Essence and Power in Christian Thought

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pp. 127-146

In the year 1270 a special disputation was held at the University of Paris, as usual in the season of Advent. Unlike the regular disputations, where the master fixed the question and left it to advanced students to discuss it, in this case the question was determined by the audience and the master had to handle it. ...

5. Religion and Science, Faith and Reason: Some Pascalian Reflections

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pp. 147-167

There seem to be two main approaches in the literature to the question of the relation between science and religion. The bad, old approach is exemplified by two books from the nineteenth century: John William Draper’s History of the Conflict between Religion and Science and ...

6. On Time and Truth

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pp. 168-184

In Book 11 of his Confessions, St. Augustine famously introduces a question about the nature of time: “What then is time?” wonders Augustine. “Provided that no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to an inquirer, I do not know.”¹ ...

7. The Prevalence of Truth

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pp. 185-207

One of the great ironies of Heidegger’s philosophy is the enormous confidence that he has in theoretical thinking. It is ironic—someone would say even fatally ironic—because he is convinced in the capacity of this thinking to demonstrate the primacy of being over thinking, at least insofar as the thinking is of the sort that would render being an object of theory. ...

8. Will versus Reason: Truth in Natural Law, Positive Law, and Legal Theory

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pp. 208-231

One of the ongoing mysteries of philosophy is how it can make the obvious seem so difficult and obscure. Philosophers ask questions like “what is truth?” and legal theorists ask questions like “what is law?” In response to the type of discussions such questions evoke, one might quote Ludwig Wittgenstein, ...

9. Art and Truth: From Plato through Nietzsche to Heidegger

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pp. 232-276

Plato and Heidegger stand at two ends of the philosophic tradition. Plato launched metaphysics as the search for the truth of the Whole; Heidegger attempted to get back to the ground of metaphysics after it reached its supposed end, in one sense in Hegel and in another sense in Nietzsche. ...

10. Truth and Identity: The Thomistic Telescope

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pp. 277-309

The question of truth is deeply related to the question of identity and stability. If we think of truth as saying ‘what is the case’, as in ‘it’s true that there’s a cat perched on the windowsill’, then the cat has to stay still long enough for one to be able to verify this. ...

11. Truth and Progress in the Sciences: An Innocent Realist Perspective

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pp. 310-336

Old Deferentialists in the philosophy of science, rightly taking for granted the rationality of the scientific enterprise, and rightly impressed by the power of the new, modern logic, assumed that the epistemology of science could be articulated in logical terms. ...

Bibliography

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pp. 337-356

Contributors

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pp. 357-360

Jan A. Aertsen was appointed professor at the Free University of Amsterdam in 1984. He became professor of philosophy and director of the Thomas Institute at the University of Cologne in 1994. Since 2003 he has been professor emeritus. ...

Index

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pp. 361-368