CAN YOU HANDLE THE TRUTH?

May 25, 2015
JOURNALING, PHILOSOPHY-ETHICS
2 Comments

REFLECTIONS ON “WHAT IS TRUTH?”

TRUTHTOM CRUISE

From notes gathered into my journals: Will I ever “get to the bottom of it?” [bottom of what?]

Should I know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

* * *
TRUTH = the quality of being true or correct according to SOME ground or test for establishing the reality of a statement (proposition, idea, thought, belief, opinion).

“Truth” assumes that what it applies to DOES depict fact or reality.

But some statements are to be tested: proposals (accept or reject); resolutions (yes, or violated); promises (kept or not); suggestions (heeded, or not); commands (obeyed, or not).

***TRUTH IS THE CONFORMITY OF THE INTELLECT WITH THE THING (logical truth, “truth of knowing”).

SHOULDS: Contain VALUE JUDGMENTS, without moral import at all. “You should turn here.”  YET, the action COULD have moral import…and consequences: “You should turn here, or you’ll….”

PRACTICAL LIVING demands certain guidelines or limits within which all humans should behave.

BASIC MORAL PRINCIPLES can indeed be set up to govern most human actions–yet exceptions can be provided for, with careful and strong justification.

So, we live with NORMATIVES (“It’s good/right.”) and PRESCRIPTIVES (“You should not do it.”).

**Yet, even if a proposition is true, there is no guarantee that people will act in accordance with it–yet the proposition still remains true whether they do or not….

THUS:
Just because they do it doesn’t mean it’s true.
Just because they believe it doesn’t make true.

* * *

PRINCIPLE OF TRUTH-TELLING, OR HONESTY:

The principle that states a human being should always OUGHT to strive to tell the truth or be honest, except when it would interfere with or seriously violate the principles of GOODNESS, VALUE OF LIFE, and JUSTICE. [This principle is necessary for meaningful communication and human relationships…]

Vital-Lies-Simple-Truths-CoverARE SOME LIES VITAL? 

VALUE OF LIFE [SANCTITY OF LIFE] = 1st moral principle = life of humans is to be preserved, protected, valued

GOODNESS/RIGHTNESS = moral/ethical = good/right
Promote good over bad
Cause no harm/badness
Prevent badness/harm

JUSTICE/FAIRNESS = not enough to do good and avoid bad, but some effort must be made to distribute the good and bad resulting from actions = moral rightness, equity, fairness:
Exchange = payment/remuneration
Distributive = merit, reward (for work performed)
Social = fair and just for all
Retributive = eye for an eye/punishment

* * *

From On Truth by Harry G. Frankfurt (Knopf, 2006):

Truth is so important to us . . . we should especially care about it. Yet common sense tells us that we know what it means to tell the truth, …and what it means to give false accounts: to lie.

Higher levels of civilization must depend even more heavily on a conscientious respect for the importance of honesty and clarity in reporting the FACTS, and on a stubborn concern for accuracy in determining what the facts are.

[No one in his right mind would rely on a builder, or submit to a physician, who does not care about truth. There is a clear difference between getting things right and getting them wrong, and thus a clear difference between the true and the false.]

…societies cannot afford to tolerate anyone or anything that fosters a slovenly indifference to the distinction between true and false. AND indulge the . . . narcissistic pretense that being true to the facts is less important than being “true to oneself.”

We need to avoid being debilitated either by error or by ignorance. We need to know–and, of course, we must understand how to make productive use of–a great many truths.

Our success or failure in whatever we undertake, and therefore in life altogether, depends on whether we are guided by truth or whether we proceed in ignorance or on the basis of falsehood.

WE REALLY CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT THE TRUTH… 

…hiding our eyes from reality will not cause any reduction of its dangers and threats.

If we have no respect for the distinction between true and false, we may as well kiss our much-vaunted “rationality” good-bye.

For every fact, there is a true statement that relates it; and every true statement relates a fact.

…caring about truth plays a considerably different role in our lives, and in our culture, than does caring about the accumulation of individual truths.

It is because we appreciate that truth is important to us that we care about accumulating truths.

It is only through our recognition of a world of stubbornly independent reality, fact, and truth that we come both to recognize ourselves as beings distinct from others and to articulate the specific nature of our own identities.

How, then, can we fail to take the importance of factuality and of reality seriously? How can we fail to care about truth? We cannot….

JOURNAL KEEPING

May 18, 2015
JOURNALING, PEOPLE, WRITING PHILOSOPHY
10 Comments

“…many things have been omitted which should have been recorded. . . . It is not easy to write in a journal what interests us at any time, because to write it is not what interests us.”   –Henry David Thoreau

thoreauHenry David Thoreau

Through the writings of Thoreau–Walden and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers–a person interested in journaling can begin to make connections between writing, self, and life. Thoreau is the teacher.

walden pondA journal can help its writer make such connections, make her or him feel alive, discern life; journal writing can bring insight, can shape human identity, and give life meaning.

The journal will become a place to make progress in prose style, a method of/a place for self-understanding and self-revelation.

The journal-keeper will be able to make connections with the past and the present–and have a special vision: to see and to realize the value in making those connections–and writing about them.

week on the concordNOTE: A diary is a fact book: I saw a rainbow. A journal is a fact book with feeling–or with feelings about the facts: I saw a magnificent rainbow and was overwhelmed by the beauty of the colors of a prism. Simple, no?

composition book 1The Speckled Notebook for Journal Entries

“DON’T BE SO CRITICAL!”

May 11, 2015
READING, WRITING PHILOSOPHY
2 Comments

Is there such a thing as a “right” way of literary criticism or critical theory?

Do you want/need a sound (old), “common sense” approach, among so many other “theories”?

David Daiches is (was) one of my critical heroes who told me “there is no single right method of handling literary problems. There is no single approach to works of literary art that will yield all the significant truths about them.” (This certainly goes for movies/film, too.)

I learned (and taught) these five: Historical, Formalist, Sociocultural, Psychological, and Mythopoeic (and maybe something like “Eclectic”).

But, since “art is greater than its interpreters…all criticism is tentative, partial, oblique.” (Studying the five MAY help us find our way.)

Criticism should be a MEANS to greater understanding and appreciation–not an end in itself.

“We turn to criticism [if we want] to develop and strengthen the ‘civilized’ approach to the arts: to enjoy with discrimination, to discern value, to recognize and reject the spurious, to respond maturely to the genuine, never to be fooled by the shabby and the second hand.”

“Every effective…critic sees some facet of…art and develops our awareness with respect to it; but the total vision, or something approximating it, comes only to those who learn how to blend the insights yielded by many critical approaches.”

Epilogue to Critical Approaches to Literature (1956; 1981) by David Daiches [1912-2005]

Question_mark_(black_on_white)

“MYTHOPOEIC”

May 4, 2015
RITE/RITUAL
1 Comment

What? Mystical, cosmological, sociological, pedagogical.

“What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
…
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.” T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

* * *

J. Campbell.  M. Eliade.  C. Jung.  B. Bettelheim.  R. May.  N. Frye.  P. Wheelwright

Living a myth implies a genuinely religious experience, differing from the ordinary experience of everyday life, re-enacting fabulous, exalting, significant events.

“The bard is sacred to the gods and is their priest.” –John Milton

Ovid.  Whitman.  Milton.  Thoreau.

We live the myth ceremonially or by our performing the ritual [the “doing”; rite is the “how to do”]: in one way or another, we “live” the myth in the sense that we are “seized by the sacred, exalting power of the events recollected or re-enacted.” –Eliade

Employee-Wash-Hands-Sign-NHE-13171_300Simple hand washing?

The Lavabo: Latin for wash (or bathe).  In the ancient church, the priest would clean his hands after receiving gifts of oil, food, and other goods.

“The priest then begins to recite Psalm 26: “I wash my hands in innocence”: Lavabo inter innocentes manus meas.”

“When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, . . .he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood,’ he said.” –Matthew 27:24 (NIV)

“Will all the water in the ocean wash this blood from my hands?” –Mrs. Macbeth

Surgical Hand Scrubs: “There is a standard procedure for surgical hand antisepsis, gowning, and gloving which is based on current evidence, best practice, and validated research.” –Every medical-surgical instruction manual.

“Get up there and wash your hands before dinner!”–Mom

lava soap bars