Truth: A History and a Guide for the Perplexed

by Felipe Fernández-Armesto

The pursuit of truth, says Felipe Fernández-Armesto, is "the quest for language that can match reality." He believes that the nature of that quest has never quite been fully understood; Truth aims to fill the void. He identifies four key methods of determining the truth--what we feel, what we are told, what we figure out, and what we observe--which are given poetic names such as "the hairy ball--teeth optional" and "the cage of wild birds." These four methods always exist together in every culture, although each one may be differently valued in different places at different times.

But Western philosophy after Descartes, in Fernández-Armesto's assessment, has been largely hostile to these ways of knowledge, and has steadily come to question the very existence of truth. His summation of post-Cartesian philosophy is a largely negative one, which veers dangerously close to ad hominem assaults. Nietzsche, for example, who "was praised too much in his youth for his superior powers of mind and never achieved prowess or position to match," is dismissed as "a sexually inexperienced invalid" whose philosophy was "warped and mangled out of his own lonely, sickly self-hatred." Pragmatism and existentialism, two of the 20th century's most important philosophical movements, are found inadequate; the former is "the philosophy of lovers of technology," while the latter "represents the retreat of Luddites and pessimists into the security of self-contemplation." But even though "philosophical subjectivisms, scientific uncertainties, and dumbing, numbing linguistics" have served to undermine the notion of truth, Fernández-Armesto believes, they cannot destroy it thoroughly. It seems that even in the face of relativism, truth will win out.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Nonfiction

257 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Felipe Fernández-Armesto is a British professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and author of several popular works, notably on cultural and environmental history.

Reviews

[Nicolai · Rating 5 out of 5]

truth comes in 4 flavours

1. what you are told (authority)
2. what you sense
3. what you feel
4. what you derive from reason

geat writer

[Byunggyu Park · Rating 3 out of 5]

The following sums up one of his main views illustrated in this book: “We have spent so long prising ourselves out of nature and looking down on the rest of creation from an assumed height that we now find it hard to work our way back into a structure of thought which fits the structure of nature - in which the rules by which we think and live are 'fed into or derived from submerged assumptions about how the universe works'.”

The author’s anarcho-primitive ideology would perplex people than guide the perplexed. He romanticises the uneducated people with underdeveloped minds while name-calling the cultured people to be corrupted with arrogance. His effort to be politically correct severely interferes with his pursuit of detailing what truth is, what faculty was used to attain it, and how it’s regarded throughout history. And I couldn’t help but doubt throughout the first chapter what is there to be learned accurately on the subject of truth from a person whose glamourisation of the primitive worldview borders on truthlessness.

[Pauline · Rating 3 out of 5]

The subtitle says it is a history and a guide for the perplexed. It succeeds as history, including a good many examples from cultures I had not heard of, as well as citations from Western civilization that I was not familiar with. But as a guide for the perplexed, I'm not sure what it does. It points up the pros and cons to each means of claiming or searching for truth, but in the end about all he can say is that all of those means continue to be used to some extent, whether or not there is actually any objective truth out there. Lots of interesting details, but not an easy read.

[Al Bità · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a poetic evocation of a type of history on that most slippery of subjects: Truth. The subtitle of the work suggests that this is also a work to guide the perplexed. The writing style is very elegant and almost lyrical, and as such is a pleasure to read. It is also perhaps a little too lofty: Fernandez-Armesto will often use $100 words when a $10 one would have sufficed, and regularly inserts foreign language words and phrases (French, mostly, but also the occasional German) without translating them, the worst being a quote in French from Montaigne presented at the opening to Chapter 2, with no accompanying translation. The main text is presented without footnotes, but there are an extensive number of endnotes which are referred back to the pages to which they are relevant. This allows the text to flow smoothly.

It appears to me that the main thrust of the work is to reassure readers that the search for 'truth' will go on, despite any misgivings they might have about the value of that search. The author criticises those who might consider previous civilisations as being of lesser quality to today — a comment with which I agree. Where I have qualms is in the overall arguments. The author argues that there are four types of Truth which will continue to be explored by humanity: the Truth you Feel (which he associates with the earliest forays into the subject, such as Animism, spirits and 'superstitions'); the Truth you are Told (the area of Oracles, Scriptures, and personal revelations); the Truth of Reason (essentially the area of logical reason); and the Truth you perceive through your senses (the area of Empiricism and 'science'). All four types are presented and critiqued, each subject to relevant scrutiny as to each version's 'veracity', as it were. The final sections deal with the modern and particularly post modernist doubts about all these kinds of truth as such. The author finally calls for an acceptance of the four ways as valid and useful paths for the exploration of Truth.

My interpretation of all this is that 'truth' is a relative and often subjective concept; Fernando-Armesto, on the other hand seems to imply that regardless of what faults we might with each type, there is some kind of 'other-worldly' reality where 'truth' exists absolutely, and that all our attempts to reach that level are worthy and worthwhile, each demanding its own respect and humble acknowledgement (an approach which seems to me to stem from the 'truth you feel' category). This approach,however, seems to me to be none other than a kind of Platonic Ideal, and I question whether such absolute perfection as implied by this concept is valid or not, let alone 'real'. It seems to me that the only comfort the perplexed might get from this work is one akin to religious faith that 'the truth is out there'. For me, the work had the opposite effect: it merely affirmed my own belief that there are many 'truths' and that there certainly there is nothing absolute about any of them, nor that they all 'aspire' to an 'ultimate' truth; moreover, there is nothing to fear from that relativity — indeed, it enriches our lives precisely because there is no Absolute Truth. It is only when someone or some organisation insists that their truth is the Only Truth, the Absolute Truth, that things go awry.

[James Creechan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that I often recommended when I taught courses (sociology, deviant behaviour, criminology, law and social research). It's by an Oxford philosopher - Felipe Fernandez-Armesto a

Fernandez Armesto's book is a short overview of how humans have engaged in a search for the true meaning of anything. He's a wise man, and recognizes that he can't summarize all epistemological and metaphysical thought in a short little book (257 pages) — but he does provide a simple classification of the ways that humans have sought to know the truth of any event. Fernandez Armesto writes that there are really only 4 meaningful ways of "knowing" or "arriving" at the truth: a) there is the truth we feel, b) there is the truth we are told, c) there is the truth we observe (see), and d) there is the truth that we rationally determine.

Fernandez Armesto also writes that each of these truths have value, and that each of these truths can serve to guide human action. But he also points out (as have many others), that human beings have a preference for one form of truth and they lean towards the lessons they learn from that one preferred form of searching.

Personally, I am guided by a search for truth that is based on observation (seeing) and also a form of truth that I hope (believe) is grounded in rational thought and principles. This is obviously why I personally base my knowledge of many things in the world on a preference for systematic observation and the use of logic, science and research methodology. But I also recognize that I often act on the basis of things I have been told (...especially by my sainted grandmother) and also by things I feel. Those ways of "knowing" the truth still guide me and others. But in my professional life, I am most often guided by the forms of "truth" that are based in fact and observation. This does not mean that I demean those who look at truth in a different way — in fact, it means that I always try to look at how others see the truth and try to understand their point of view. To me, the search for truth is not "my way or the highway". But in the end, I do make decisions on the basis of those rules of seeking truth that make most sense to me.

[A Ter · Rating 5 out of 5]

At times arcane, but overall a fascinating look at the co-evolution of how mankind thinks of "truth". (I say "co-evolution" because the author is explicit that there is little linearity but rather ideas emerge at times chronologically at other times simultaneously.) More accessible than other more academic works on the subject which presuppose substantial background reading in philosophy and epistemology.

[Lobstergirl]

This is a kind of learnedly self-indulgent, highly self-conscious, decadently rambling writing style that I find extremely annoying. All systems abort.

I did quickly skim from page 50 on to see if there was anything that caught my attention. Not really. There's a teeny-tiny discussion of Collingwood's The Idea of History on p. 192, but nothing groundbreaking.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prawda, tylko prawda, tyż prawda, a to wszystko g***o prawda - ks. J. Tischner. Armesto przedstawił trochę misz-masz o prawdzie. Trzeba się wczytać.

[Ian Kloester · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed the authors summary of society's search for truth and his concern that extremists or nihilists should not be aloud to hijack it or abandon it respectively.