What is Truth

Of course the strong strand of Romanticism in modern culture could do all sorts of things with words so that language became a game of semantics where words were small on content but large on connotation. So “commitment” sounded good, it was even good for a slogan, but it had lost all meaning. Inevitably the commitment did not last. Some people looked for more commitment or other commitment that might give satisfaction but they seldom found that ideal creed, party, or love affair for they all looked inviting at first but all turned to dust or took up too much time or energy. People instead, now watch sport or game shows on television and “nobody thinks too much on Desolation Row”.

As confusion turns to disillusion so philosophy tries to understand and academics work out a theory and write a paper on what it is all about. Post Modernism, Post Christianity, and Post History and all the other Post Whatever, are simply existentialism where the despair and the angst has been replaced by a belief that we can do it ourselves. Reality is socially constructed. Well that is partly true. The reality out there is reflected in our thoughts, so what? It is still reality out there, and we do our best to perceive it.

History is socially constructed. Of course it is, we can only interpret and apply the sources for our historical investigation. What we have may not be way it really was but there are some obvious factors that guarantee the skilled historian can get some way to understand the past and its people. We have a common humanity for a start. The passions and the fears are the same for everyman and for every woman. The hopes and the ambitions may have different cultural clothing but they are, in the end, the same. They are hopes of love, for security, and for recognition. So what is the problem?

Morality is socially constructed. That is partly true in that we make the laws, but on what basis do we make them and is it a just one. Our thinking, from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, is that we have pulled the moral rug from under our feet. Neither of these, nor Kant, nor Hegel, have been able to solve the problem. They have not been able to show us how we make a morality that is not based on absolutes. That is, one which is based on a reality that is really out there. Truth is not expediency, nor is it preference, my perception may be far from the truth but truth persists and, by a dialogue with my fellows, I may learn enough to get a bit closer to it. Maybe in this life I shall never attain to it but it is there nevertheless.

We cannot of course live with the Superman of Nietzsche, nor with Kierkegaard leaping off the high board into the void, without knowing whether there is water in the pool or not. In a court of law the witness is required to tell the truth, “beyond all reasonable doubt”. The judge and jury accept it as truth if it can be backed up by other independent witness, or by other, irrefutable facts. The Judge, of course interprets and applies the law to the case, but that is another matter. The witnesses and the jury are concerned with truth and they do not understand that as something which is socially constructed. We cannot live with Post Modernism. As soon as we enter the realities of every day life whether it is an office, a factory or a court of law we find we are stuck with the truth and we feel cheated if we cannot find it.