Life in the Pandemic XVIII: Truth in trouble…?

Truth is having a hard time. This statement of the obvious is worth stating for two reasons. Firstly, it implies that there is something called truth, and that, in my view, is something worth implying and indeed asserting. Given that you probably have a fairly instant and rough idea of what I mean (whether you agree with me or not), suggests that such a statement is neither incoherent or meaningless. The second reason that it’s worth stating is that while obvious, it alludes to the observation that something interesting is going on. On one level truth has always had a hard time. Defining and debating what “it” is, has kept busy both amateur and professional philosophers for thousands of years. And yet, as I’ve noted before, at least as far as public and political life in the West is concerned, we seem to have moved into a new phase of hardship.

In the US, the “big lie” is not yet dead. Nor has it yet been driven from the field by the “big truth”. According to CNN (not an entirely unbiased source of information I grant you), former president Trump has just had his impeachment legal team quit/fired because of a disagreement over strategy. This disagreement, it is claimed, comes about because Trump wants to maintain the fiction that the election was stolen from him. His lawyers apparently thought that this was not a viable strategy for the trial in the Senate that he now faces. It is unclear (at least to me) whether this is just about the narrow strategic issue, or because the lawyers understand that they cannot assert what they know to be manifestly untrue. However, at a minimum this shows a certain level of dedication to the lie on Trump’s part. Again, this could all be a strategy. But it could also be because he actually believes it. We shall probably never know the truth (as it were). Strength of belief, while often admirable, can’t turn a lie into the truth. Trump does still have his supporters, and they number in the tens of millions. This again is not sufficient to make the lie true. It just means that it’s a widely believed lie. Who knows which way this story is going to end. Is a complete partisan detachment from facts and truth simply going to become one more viable path to power with no accountability? Or will the political culture in the US revert to the more normal pattern of a commitment to at least the semblance of prizing and speaking the truth, with suitable wiggle room provided by the careful use of words?  So to this extent, in this particular context, the truth is still in trouble. It remains to be see whether this approach to life, this particular and brazen abuse of truth, will successfully spread to this side of the Atlantic.

Of course, some would maintain that either it already had, or in fact crossed from here to there – the “all politicians are liars” school of thought. But it appears that here there still is an interest in at least seeming to tell the truth. In Scotland, the First Minister, may be in big trouble for misleading the Scottish Parliament. The story is complicated and not particularly edifying. But if it turns out she has said x when in fact y is true, she will be greatly diminished, even if not completely finished. And the x’s and y’s in this case are themselves matters of detail. It’s the misleading, if it is proved, that will do the damage, not the content of the misleading itself. On the pandemic front, there is still liberal quoting of science and evidence, because accurate, truthful information matters, and science is still seen as a way of procuring it. So truth may be fighting back. Of course if it turns out that it’s all just carefully crafted propaganda, then things might turn again. The idea that it somehow doesn't matter has yet to gain much traction.

All of this comes against a background of “truth” not really having had any clear moorings for a while. Plato et al argued for truth that was universal, ideal and unchanging, belonging to a different realm from the one which we inhabit. These ideas were adopted and rejigged by Augustine and others, so that truth found its foundation in God. And indeed the Bible reveals that the basis of all truth is personal, not primarily rational. It is found in the God Who is both true and truth and intimately linked to His truthful, faithful and true person. The clear answer to Pilate’s question (“what is truth?”) was the person standing in front of him; a person who both claimed to be truth (Jn 14:6), and whose enemies recognised as “true” (Matt 22:16).

Things worked fairly well until this foundation was “abolished”. Nietzsche succinctly captured it with his “death of God” ramblings. He called it the most important of recent events “that ‘god is dead’, that the belief in the Christian God has become unworthy of belief..”. The retreat from truth, truth that is true everywhere for all time, gathered pace and in more recent times culminated in some of the more radical proposals of first existentialism and now postmodernism. And how is that all working out? Well apparently it's not just that we won't ever know, but we can't ever know!

Fortunately, Nietzsche’s (probably syphilitic) ramblings were just that. As the apocryphal graffiti on the walls of countless University Philosophy department walls attests, it is in fact Nietzsche who is dead (“signed God”). Dostoyevsky has Ivan Karamazov say that “Without God, everything is permitted” (although for some reason this is disputed in some quarters as false news; but see here). But as He is not dead, truth is still with is, and everything is not permitted. Hence the general idea (although again under assault) that truth is good and lies are bad. Even although such notions are inevitably inconvenient for all of us at some point, for most of us this should actually be a comfort. It is not necessary to walk in confusion, knowing nothing for sure and being able to communicate even less. Even in trouble, we can find and know truth. It’s to be found where it all has been, and always will be.