Truth and the Search for It

H. PIETERSMA Truth and the Search for It In 1778 the German dramatist and critic Gotthoid Ephraim Lessing wrote: Man's worth does not consist in the truth he possesses or thinks he possesses but in the honest labour he has done in order to attain it. For his powers increase not through possession but through the search for truth. In this alone his ever-growing perfection consists. Possession makes him quiescent, indolent , and proud. If God held all truth in his right hand and the always ongoing striving after truth in his left hand - it being understood that I would always and forever fall into error - and if he said to me 'Choose.' Iwould humbly take his left hand and say: 'Father, give that to me. After all pure truth is thine alone.'t The text is well known. And it undoubtedly makes a valid point which we all readily recognize. But I am inclined to go further and maintain that the way in which the point is made, namely by way of presenting a choice between two alternatives, has fascinated many minds. Isn't it clear that there is such a choice and isn't it equally clear that Lessing made the right choice, and that he made it for the right reasons? He chose man's worth, and man's worth clearly consists in the search for truth. Such considerations have endeared Lessing to us and I find that quite understandable. Yet there is something about such an attitude towards Lessing that worries me. The formulation of this worry will lead .straight into the subject of this article. What worries me is this thinking in alternatives and the point about having to choose one, namely the search for truth. It worries me because it tends to lead to what is at present a widespread insistence on defining truth exclusively in terms of search. To be sure, Lessing does not speak of the nature of truth as such but rather of two attitudes, one of which is to be rejected in favour of the other. When one thinks one possesses the truth, one becomes lazy, arrogant, self-satisfied, while the attitude which views truth as the object of search brings out what is best in humanity. Lessing does not address the question as to what the truth of beliefs or statements consists in. His observations are none the less relevant to my theme, because the confusion of thought I want to discuss is one that springs for the most part from a thinking focused on two contrasting attitudes. And its concern with such a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 52, NUMBER 3, SPRING 1983 0042-o247/83/o500-0221-0234$c)1·50fo It! UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRBSS 222 H. PIETERSMA contrastis likewise motivated by a fundamental concern with the worth or status of man. What is truth? Pilate asked this question and I don't know exactly what he meant. But when philosophers ask it, they are not inquiring as to which of a given number ofbeliefs orstatements are true. Since we are all interested in truth, we all ask that question quite often in one way or another. Whatever situation we may be in, we want to know where we stand, what is the case-in short, what is true. It does not matter whether our interests are primarily practical or theoretical. And it is obvious that such questions are important. Philosophers, however, do not ask that kind of question when they ask: What is truth? Their specifically philosophical interest is not focused on whether this or that statement is true or false but on what the truth of any statement whatever might consist in. Which statements are true and which are false is a question they leave aside, to be answered, if at all, not by them but by others. As to the specifically philosophical question about truth, there is an answer that might be called traditional. In all essentials it goes back to Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle said: 'To say of what is thatit is not, or of what is notthat it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is...