What does it mean to be truthful? What role does truth play in
our lives? What do we lose if we reject truthfulness? No
philosopher is better suited to answer these questions than Bernard
Williams. Writing with his characteristic combination of passion
and elegant simplicity, he explores the value of truth and finds it
to be both less and more than we might imagine.
Modern culture exhibits two attitudes toward truth: suspicion of
being deceived (no one wants to be fooled) and skepticism that
objective truth exists at all (no one wants to be naive). This
tension between a demand for truthfulness and the doubt that there
is any truth to be found is not an abstract paradox. It has
political consequences and signals a danger that our intellectual
activities, particularly in the humanities, may tear themselves to
pieces.
Williams's approach, in the tradition of Nietzsche's genealogy,
blends philosophy, history, and a fictional account of how the
human concern with truth might have arisen. Without denying that we
should worry about the contingency of much that we take for
granted, he defends truth as an intellectual objective and a
cultural value. He identifies two basic virtues of truth, Accuracy
and Sincerity, the first of which aims at finding out the truth and
the second at telling it. He describes different psychological and
social forms that these virtues have taken and asks what ideas can
make best sense of them today.
"Truth and Truthfulness" presents a powerful challenge to the
fashionable belief that truth has no value, but equally to the
traditional faith that its value guarantees itself. Bernard
Williams shows us that when we lose a sense of the value of truth,
we lose a lot both politically and personally, and may well lose
everything.
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