MY PROBLEM WITH TRUTH

MY PROBLEM WITH TRUTH

D. R. Khashaba

Next to the term ‘reality’ no other has given me so much trouble and exposed me to such grave misunderstanding as the term ‘truth’. The statement “Philosophy seeks truth” sounds as much of a truism as “On Earth day is followed by night”. Yet I have been in all my writings emphatically asserting that philosophy has nothing to do with truth. Clearly there is something here calling for explanation.

Why have I found it worthwhile, rather necessary, to endure all the trouble and misunderstanding caused by my insistence on distancing philosophy from truth? I found that necessary because the seemingly innocuous statement that “philosophy seeks truth” carries within it the delusive view that philosophy aims at attaining true knowledge about the objective world. This view is doubly pernicious because many or rather most philosophers embraced that delusive view and it is that false view and false expectation that have brought upon philosophy the ridicule of the Empiricists and the Positivists. Only Socrates-Plato and Kant have been completely free of that illusion.

How then shall we express the sound core that wins such immediate and wide acceptance for the statement that philosophy seeks truth? Without digressing into a lengthy explanation I would suggest that we give both philosophy and truth their due when we say that philosophy seeks understanding.

D. R. Khashaba

March 9, 2018

Posted to https://philosophia937.wordpress.com and http://khashaba.blogspot.com