On telling the truth

Abstract

A brief history of truth might go something like this. In pre-modern times, truth was by and large a phenomenon set apart from the lowly material world. It was loftier than everyday realities, dwelling in some Olympian sphere of its own; or alternatively it could be thought of as deeper than them, lurking elusively at the heart of things. Getting at the truth thus meant discarding the empirical shells of phenomena in order to pluck out their vital essences. This view of truth survives well into modernity, as Hegel among others would attest; but it is only with modernity proper that truth descends to earth on a dramatic scale, as the mind turns from religious or Platonic ideals and buckles itself in Baconian style to the actually existent.