Truth is what is, no matter what humans may desire. Truth will, in the end, win out.
When we are dealing with humans, short term success is often divorced from truth. Human will, can be easily manipulated; politicians and business managers have become expert at manipulating human will.
A current glaring example is the Iraq war. If the war was a success, in American terms, few Americans would care about the truth of the matter. Whether the war caused 600,000 or 30,000 dead Iraqis is of little concern. Only when success is not achieved is the truth of the matter in question.
I think that we are always better off, in the long run, if we value truth more than success. Preparing our self to recognize truth is a long, arduous, and many splendored task; it is well worth the effort. Do you agree?
Hi Chuck, I hope you don’t mind me pointing out that had you started a fourth line with “Truth will, in the end, win out.” you would have a quatrain worthy of the creative writing forum. Here is my take on truth: ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi … p?t=153833
Your poetry is well said. I never gave consideration to the four sentences that could be considered to be poetry. I never knew I was a poet, but as my childhood friends would say, my feet show it. No, I guess I got that mixed up with Longfellows.
Convertible to Esse (Being), Verum (Truth) is the good of intelligence. I repeat myself, the fact that truth belongs to no one, whereas a good is always personal, is the drama of human life… All literature and novels revolve around this, because the cause of jealousy is there, the fear of losing ones’ good, whereas with truth that ain’t the case, we don’t have the same drama, truth belongs to no one, therefore no one can take it from us, and that’s probably why we are not so much on a quest for it, given that we cannot possess truth…
I thus do concur that the quest for truth is well worth it. In his day, after having followed Plato’s sandals for 10-15 years, Aristotle ends up leaving Plato, specifying that he loves Plato and truth, but that he loves truth even more…
We are presently under the ferula of two neoplatonic tyrannies: poetry on the one hand and mathematics and positivism on the other hand, which has lead to the primacy of scientific knowledge over all the rest. It is a systemisation of Kant’s transcendental subjectivity which, once again, is at its place with regards to poetic or mathematical knowledge but absolutely not in view of a realist philosophy. This is the most fundamental choice that can be: either we leave reality in our wake or we let reality take front stage. Yet the answer oft heard to this radical question is that knowledge is superior to reality since it enables to elevate reality to a state of splendour…
harvey, could you please qualify this statement a little more? Are you saying that the pursuit of goodness over the pursuit of truth is akin to the denial of, or adherence to, reality?
The truth vs good passage was a bit of a sidenote. Good is convertible to being (the only authentic transcendental), just like truth!
Truth is the adequation between intelligence and reality. And today we have forgotten that intelligence is only perfectly itself to the extent that it seeks what is true. The Marxist, Hegelian and also Nietzschean dialectics which we are subjected to without oft times realizing it, block and confound practical philosophy and speculative philosophy. We well and truly find ourselves in front of a wall that is particularly difficult to climb over. Perfectly unwittingly most of the time, the moderns remain at the genetic level, at quantity and what is measurable, never reaching spirit, quality and the order of perfection.
In an environment of incessant change, it is difficult to find in human reality anything that is not subject to change, to what is relative. It is difficult to discern that human intelligence is made, radically, to go beyond scientific and technical knowledge, that it is made to discover a truth of an other order. More to the point, it is difficult to make out that human intelligence, when it is most true to itself, is made to attain what is, the existing reality in all its profoundness.
Perhaps you should reconsider your attempt to appreciate music and direct your apparently boundless energy into poetry. And thanks.