Truth Is Real and Philosophers Must Return Their Attention to It

Before the 20th century, reflection on truth in Western intellectual and spiritual traditions usually exalted it. ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty

One might have hoped to turn to philosophy for a clarification of the nature of truth, and maybe even a celebration of it. But philosophy of pragmatist, analytic and continental varieties lurched into the post-truth era a century ago.

It is there that true being dwells, without colour or shape, that cannot be touched; reason alone, the soul’s pilot, can behold it, and all true knowledge is knowledge thereof.’

It is the highest thing. Jesus agrees, proclaiming himself at John 14:6 to be the way, the truth and the life.

truth is a problem now for everyone, if the idea seems empty or useless in ‘the era of social media’, ‘science denialism’, ‘conspiracy theories’ and suchlike, maybe that just means that ‘everyone’ has caught up to where philosophy was in 1922.

Plato’s truth is identical not only with the beautiful, but with the good and the just.

Plato having anointed truth as the goal of philosophy, the goal of human life. ‘Assuredly we must be bold to speak what is true, above all when our discourse is upon truth

It is often said, rather casually, that truth is dissolving, that we live in the ‘post-truth era’. But truth is one of our central concepts – perhaps our most central concept – and I don’t think we can do without it.