-
3 Pluralism, Truthfulness, and the Patience of Being
- Georgetown University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
c h a p t e r c h a p t e r 3 Pluralism, Truthfulness, and the Patience of Being William Desmond “Truth exists. Only lies are invented.” —George Braques Truth and Construction How we understand truth cannot be disconnected from how we understand ourselves or from how we understand how we humans are to be. “How we are to be” indicates the human being as a creature with a certain promise of being that calls out to be realized in one way or other. Some ways will enable fulfillment of the promise if we are true to what we are. Some ways may betray the promise if we are false to what we are. The intimate connection of being human and being true is not a merely theoretical issue but has inescapable ethical and indeed religious significance. In philosophy we are familiar with a plurality of significant theories of truth. I will mention a few of them. There is the correspondence theory: Truth is the correlation, more or less exact, of our intellect to things. There 54 william desmond is the coherence theory: What is most important is not an external correspondence but the immanent self-consistency of our concepts or thoughts or propositions. There are idealistic theories in which the identity of being and thought is claimed, or in which, in Hegel’s famous words, “the true is the whole.” There are pragmatic theories of truth: Truth is what works for us, in the long run. And there are more. This plethora of theories might seem congenial to the contemporary ethos, which seems highly pluralistic. Yet none of these theories celebrates sheer plurality in an undiscriminating way. Our diverse answers to the question of truth call us back from any attitude that endorses “anything goes.” Not everything goes. There are different senses of being true, some more appropriate to more objective determinations of actuality, some more fitting for the elusive enigmas of the human heart. To be true to something is to enact a certain fidelity to that thing, hence, depending on that thing, our “being true” will be different. There is a pluralism with regard to “being true” in that sense, but this does not preclude something more than mere plurality. I will come to this later in terms of the spirit of truthfulness.1 Nevertheless, in the contemporary pluralistic ethos, I do think there is a fairly widespread attitude that is worth noting, which is the view that connects the true and the constructed. Truth is our construction. Initially, one might think this is a fine view. Not only do we, the constructors of truth, become the sources of truth, but we also become its masters. What better augury for the betterment of the human condition and the pathway toward the (true) self-empowerment of man? Of course, the practices of science and medicine are one central area where this self-empowerment is at issue. If we are such constructors, perhaps we can reconstruct the conditions of life that will overcome the given patiences that often drag down our energies, such as sickness, disease, death, everything bearing on our frail, finite bodies. Truth as a construction seems to offer a marvelous beacon of hope. There is a widespread cultural attitude that endorses a pluralism of approaches to things, a pluralism possibly unlimited, except perhaps by the powers of human invention and imagination. The call: celebrate the many, let a thousand flowers bloom. This is not unconnected with a democratic ethos in which each person is said to deserve the same respect as the next person. It is not unconnected with a view of tradition as a hegemonic univocalism, which subordinates differences to a tyrannical homogeneity. Truth, with a capital T, is judged guilty of such a tyranny. We must not seek Truth, but truths, or as Nietzsche claimed, my truth. Let a thousand truths bloom. But this is entirely too passive: let us make a thousand truths. [44.201.131.213] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 21:32 GMT) Pluralism, Truthfulness, and the Patience of Being 55 Again, in this view, everything tends to revolve around the power of creativity or the force of free imagination. In Nietzsche’s writings, the poet or the artist generally enjoys a preeminence: they are the creators par excellence and, hence, in a sense dictate the truth that is to be. There is no truth that is; truth is to be what we determine it to be, and...