I also enjoy reading Peter Kreeft; he’s a wonderful writer and a great communicator. If you’re new to Philosophy you may want to check out his amazing logic textbook entitled Socratic Logic. I’ve found it very helpful.

At first Philosophy (like so many disciplines) can seem intimidating and confusing. This is primarily because the vocabulary and terminology is unfamiliar. Half the battle is learning the vocab. Once you learn the terms Philosophy gets a whole lot easier.

I’ve found the following books and websites to be helpful in this: The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, and Charts of Philosophy and Philosophers.
I hope this helps! Thanks for your comment!
Josh

What you could all do in your talks to grab in those like me who are on the fringe of managing all these terms and thoughts etc etc is to make EXAMPLES in real life to where this makes application.

In fact (saying “in fact” has begun to bother me having delved into this philosophy and thought) someone who would write a book explaining philosophic language and such in layman’s terms and using examples metaphors, slimily, and etc would probably do well.

Thanks

Your assertion that Jesus was a man, while being true, has no bearing on the conversation. In your first post you said,

“truth is only possible based on two things: “reality” and the proposition. Yet the proposition pre-supposes complex language, and thus a creature capable of complex language. So while man may not be the necessary for truth, something like man (in his linguistic capacity, anyway) is . . . Further, if truth is the correspondance between a proposition and “reality”, then what are we to make of Jesus’ statement “I am the truth”? Is he a proposition which corresponds to reality? Not only does the identification of truth with a man threaten your assertion that man is not the measure of reality, it doesn’t seem to fit with any correspondance theory.”

My response to this is the same as it was in my last post. According to the Correspondence Theory of Truth reality exists independent from the observer. Hence, reality is not a product of man’s perception, but rather, man’s perception is the product of reality. We hear, taste, see, smell, and feel reality. Even if man or, “something like man (in his linguistic capacity),” did not exist, reality still exists. We do not determine what is real, we experience it.

Paul says this about Jesus, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible . . . all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:15-17) So, any identification of truth with Jesus is NOT in any way shape or form the same as identifying truth with man or, “something like man (in his linguistic capacity).” Jesus is the creator and sustainer of reality. You and I and anything “man like” are not.

I never intended you to read Charts of Philosophy and Philosophers (although it’s a very helpful book). I merely wanted to point out that your challenge to my paper is actually a challenge to my source, which was written by a professional philosopher with six degrees. So, your qualms with categorizing “phenomenological theories of truth” under post-modernism is not with me it’s with Dr. Craig Mitchell.

I’ve never argued that, “the totality of truth . . . [is] . . . contained in statements.” The correspondence theory of truth does not argue this either. However, if one does not believe in God and yet holds to a correspondence theory of truth I can see that it might lead that way. As a Christian, I believe that Jesus is the truth and that he is the creator and sustainer of reality. I believe that the correspondence theory of truth is the only theory that fits with the Christian worldview.

I see no reason why metaphorical language and poetry are incompatible with a correspondence theory of truth. Furthermore, the correspondence theory of truth, as I have already shown, is predicated upon realism not nominalism, so it can’t lead to nominalism.

I’m not sure why you think I haven’t defined what truth is. I hold to a correspondence theory of truth, hence, truth is what corresponds to reality.

Thanks for suggesting Heidegger’s book Being and Time. It’s actually on my list of books I need to read. If I understand your summery of Heidegger correctly, he is not arguing against the correspondence theory of truth; he is expanding on it. Since the correspondence theory is predicated on realism it is not simply about statements and propositions. As I said earlier, true statements and propositions correspond to reality, and reality exists independent from statements and propositions (and those who make them). This seems compatible with your assertion that, “Truth comes before language.”

While Jesus may not be an ordinary man, he nevertheless was a man as much as you or I. If Jesus is the truth, then the truth is a man. Consequently, if Jesus (a man) did not exist, the truth would not exist either. In this sense, truth depends on a particular human being, and, by extension, in some way on his humanity. The only way to divide the close relation of truth and human being is to say that it was inessential for Christ that he be incarnated as a man. This would then distinguish the second person of the trinity from Christ the man, and these, I think, are dangerous waters. But this belongs to theology, not to philosophy.

The philosophical significance for our discussion of the truth of the Logos lies in the identification of the truth with something other than a proposition or its correspondance to real events. This means that while corresponding propositions may be true, they are not the only thing that constitutes truth, and therefore the view of truth as simply the correspondance of a statement to objective reality is — at least — incomplete.

If I get around to reading Charts of Philosophy and Philosophers I will, but there’s a bit of a waiting list. But, as a factual matter, phenomenology cannot be subsumed under post-modernism. It predates it, and in many cases, phenomenologists are quite opposed to “post-modernism” in every sense of the word. Husserl, Heidegger, Rahner, Pope John Paul II (in his theological works), Maurice Merleu-Ponty, Hubert Dreyfus, and Gabriel Marcel all utilize phenomenology but fall well outside the post-modernist category.

“Any theory of truth which rejects the notion that truth is absolute is fundamentally flawed. To say that truth is subjective, dependent upon the individuals perspective, ultimately makes no sense, and says nothing about the nature or character of truth. In such a system all perspectives by definition are equally valid. But, what if I believe that your subjective view of truth is wrong? What if I claim that truth is absolute (as in fact I am doing)? According to this view my beliefs are equally valid and hence, equally “true.” Suddenly the subjective view of truth logically breaks down. Both assertions cannot be true. It cannot be true that truth is absolute and that truth is subjective. Both of our perspectives cannot be correct. Somebody is right and somebody is wrong. But wait! If somebody is right and somebody is wrong, then truth is absolute.”

I think this is vague as to what the “absolute” nature of truth is. Logical-positivists (which you seem to be strongly influenced by) tend to mean truth finds its absolute nature in universal validity, in the statement applying in every case to every observer. No post-modern philosopher I am aware of denies that statements can be true in this sense; analytic statements are held to be universally valid.

The problem with this “universal validity” theory of truth is that it locates truth solely in the proposition, and as we already saw, Jesus’ claim to be the truth means that a Christian cannot accept the totality of truth to be contained in statements. But even the non-Christian, if he is a good philosopher, must reject correspondance theory as complete. For one thing, it is difficult to say how a word could ever correlate in any real sense to an object. In fact, I believe it could be argued that without a full-blown explanation for how certain phonetic symbols could have any real relation to things, the correspondance theory leads directly to nominalism.

According to correspondance theory a great distance would have to lie between poetry and truth. Can a person really be a flower? A feeling an eagle? Metaphor, analogy, and narrative lose their relation to truth under correspondance theory.

These objections don’t really get at the heart of the issue though. Through the whole discussion, we haven’t really said what “truth” is itself. We mean something very different when we say Jesus is the truth than we do when we say a statement is true. The ambiguity of the word must be eliminated in order to have a serious discussion. This means we cannot explain truth without diverting our attention to related concepts or philosophical positions. We must elucidate what truth means for us in every-day pre-reflective life. We must clear what obscures the truth and see it as it is in itself. In other words, we must see the original phenomena of truth; like it or not, we must engage in phenomenology.

The best treatment of this is in Heidegger’s Being and Time. I encourage you to read it, but its not the type of book you can simply pick up and understand. The key is finding a good teacher who knows it. I’ll just give a brief outline of what he says (which is insuffient).

Truth is aletheia. Aletheia is the original unveiling of something as something: it is the disclosure of a being. A statements truth lies before logic in the way it is disclosive. That means, when Darth Vader says “Luke I am your father”, the statement is primarily true insofar as it reveals to Luke his father as his father. Here, statements do correspond to reality, but this correspondance is dependant on the prior revelatory capacity of language.

Truth comes before language. Every person is already in the truth as far as they are the kind of being that can engage with other beings and see them as what they are. The aletheic “theory” (it’s not really a theory) of truth gives the proper place to poetry. The poetry of Psalms discloses the relation between God and his nation in a way that a discursive theological work could never do. Primordial truth comes more easily to religion than philosophy as truth consists in revelation.

Heidegger’s treatment of truth goes far deeper than the correspondance theory, and in fact subsumes correspondance theory under it. It explains the truth of correspondance theory in a way that is actually far more suited to ontology and even religion.

I appreciate your thoughtful comments.

You can check my source for the list of correspondence adherents: Schmitt, Frederick F. Truth: A Primer. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995 (pg. 145). Dr. Schmitt’s book is one of a small handful of books that survey theories of truth I could find in my school’s library. He cites Hume as holding a correspondence theory of truth. I can understand why you would question this, because of his extreme skepticism, but I think it is possible (while admittedly strange) to hold to a correspondence theory of truth yet doubt that we can ever know the truth.

I’d like to learn more about Ludwig Wittgenstein, he sounds like an interesting fellow. Thanks for letting me know about him.

Thank you for correcting my mistaken definition of realism. I’m not sure why I wrote it that way; I think I mixed two separate thoughts together. If you read my reply to Thomas, you’ll see that I agree with you.

I don’t believe that realism necessarily implies the correspondence theory of truth; rather, I believe that realism is a necessary condition for one to hold a correspondence theory of truth. The difference between these two statements is important.

Due to the constraints of my paper, I could not spend a sufficient amount of time examining each and every “flavor” of post-modern truth theories. So, I had to deal with the common themes that run throughout post-modern thought in general. As you say, I do admit to this in my paper. Like I said to Thomas, this paper was not intended to be a comprehensive refutation of post-modernism or of Nietzsche’s thought. However, I do think I presented the basic tenets of post-modern theories of truth fairly.

Thanks again for your criticism of my use of the terms “truth” and “validity.” You are, in fact, correct in your analysis. I need to be more careful about that in the future.

Thanks for reading my paper and for all your comments.

First, you say that correspondence theory of truth “presupposes realism”. To bolster this assertion, you list “Aristotle, the Stoics, various medieval philosophers, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Moore, and Russell.” While most of these thinkers could be identified as realists, I don’t think you could say that about Hume. In addition, one of the most famous champions of the correspondence theory of truth is Ludwig Wittgenstein, who I think you could fairly describe as a nominalist, not a realist. In fact, the whole system of modern logic–which assumes a correspondence theory of truth and which Russell had the largest hand in (with some help from Wittgenstein)–assumes a nominalistic view of universals.

Second, you define realism as the idea that “that truth is absolute or objective.” That is not the definition of realism. Realism is the philosophical doctrine that words refer to universal ideas or “essences” that exist either, as Plato argued, in a heavenly realm, or, as Aristotle and the Thomist tradition hold, in things themselves. Nominalism is the idea that words are mere labels and do not refer to any existing essences.

I think it would be fair to say that realism implies that truth is absolute or objective, but it remains to be argued whether realism implies the correpondence theory of truth. In fact, your argument will have to take account of the fact that realism spawned the system of traditional logic which, in addition to taking account of truth in propositions, also has a great deal of emphasis on basic intuition and the direct, pre-propositional apprehension of ideas, which could be considered another kind of “truth”. It will also have to take account of why the nominalistic system of propositional logic assumes the correspondence theory of truth exclusively. This state of affairs seems inconsistent with your thesis.

Also, and I think this goes to Thomas’s criticism, you do seem to lump several theories under “postmodernism” and dismiss them all in one fell swoop. You admit that you cannot deal with them adequately at the beginning of the section, but it still seems as if you dismiss them too easily. The result is that anyone who takes a view of truth as “aletheia”, as many ancient Greek thinkers did, and as many phenomonologists such as Heidegger do, will feel ill used here. There are many Catholic existentialists could also be included here. I think that is where Thomas is coming from. Their criticism here will be that aletheia is at least as consistent with realism as the correspondence theory of truth.

There are a few other issues, such as the fact that nominalistic thinking is rampant among protestants (just take note, for instance, of the wide and uncritical use of modern propositional logic among protestants). Also, in your terminology, you frequently use the terms “true” and “valid” interchangeably. I think most readers will know what you mean, but be cognizant that, in logic, ‘truth’ is customarily used in reference to propositions, not arguments, and ‘validity’ in reference to arguments, not propositions.

I don’t mean to be overcritical here. I’m glad you are addressing this issue, and I hope you continue to pursue it. But I think it is a lot more complicated than a lot of evangelical thinkers want to admit, and most evangelical treatments of it tend to make the issue more simple than it really is.

Thanks for your reply; I shall do my best to respond.

In order for one to hold a correspondence view of truth one must also believe in an objective reality; that reality exist apart from man. In other words, reality exists even if I do not. It is not dependent upon me. Accordingly, it is not “necessary,” as you claim, that something like man or a complex language exist in order for truth to exist. Truth is what corresponds to reality, and reality does not depend upon the existence of an observer. Thus, even without the existence of complex language to communicate truth, truth would still exist. Complex-language is simply an expression of what actually exists.

As to Jesus referring to himself as being, “the way, and the truth, and the life,” (John 14:6 NASB the verse that inspired the name of my blog), this in no way “threatens” my “assertion that man is not the measure of reality.” Nor does it conflict with a correspondence theory of truth. Jesus is God. He is the logos, the word that became flesh (John 1). He is the underlying reason and force behind all existence. He defines reality, he sustains reality. In this sense Jesus is the truth. We are not talking about any common man here; we are talking about the “God-man;” the incarnation. Thus, truth is not decided by man or dependent upon man for its existence. It is dependent upon God.

As to your qualms with me classifying a Phenomenological Theory of truth as being a Post-modern theory of truth, you should check out my source for this statement: Mitchell, Craig Vincent. Charts of Philosophy and Philosophers. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007. Dr. Mitchell is actually one of my professors, and a brilliant one at that.

Concerning post-modernism, I was not attempting to reject post-modernism in its entirety. My thesis states that I was attempting to defend a correspondence theory of truth by, “explain[ing] the problems with Nietzsche’s theory [of truth] which necessitate its rejection.” I agree with you; one could write an entire book refuting post-modernism. I’m actually working on a book with several other Southwestern students that refutes the emergent church movement’s attempt to merge Post-modern thought with Christianity.

Any theory of truth which rejects the notion that truth is absolute is fundamentally flawed. To say that truth is subjective, dependent upon the individuals perspective, ultimately makes no sense, and says nothing about the nature or character of truth. In such a system all perspectives by definition are equally valid. But, what if I believe that your subjective view of truth is wrong? What if I claim that truth is absolute (as in fact I am doing)? According to this view my beliefs are equally valid and hence, equally “true.” Suddenly the subjective view of truth logically breaks down. Both assertions cannot be true. It cannot be true that truth is absolute and that truth is subjective. Both of our perspectives cannot be correct. Somebody is right and somebody is wrong. But wait! If somebody is right and somebody is wrong, then truth is absolute.

The subjectivist definition of truth, by embracing all perspectives as equally valid, destroys any meaning or value in the concept of truth. You can’t define something as meaning everything. This is what I mean when I say, “if truth is everything then it is nothing.” To define something as being “whatever you think it is” is not a definition. So, to define truth as, “whatever you think it is” is to say nothing about the actual nature of truth. It is to leave truth without any definition, any value, or any meaning. The moment you do attaching meaning or value to the concept of truth you are speaking of truth in terms of absolutes. Truth either exists or it doesn’t exist. If it exists it is absolute.

Further, if truth is the correspondance between a proposition and “reality”, then what are we to make of Jesus’ statement “I am the truth”? Is he a proposition which corresponds to reality? Not only does the identification of truth with a man threaten your assertion that man is not the measure of reality, it doesn’t seem to fit with any correspondance theory.

I have a number of other problems with your paper. Phenomenology should not be classified under post-modernism as it pre-dates it; and is not a philosophy or a philosophical position. Further, “post-modernism” is a term of convenience which most of those who are often identified with it reject. Even with regard to theories of truth, “post-modern” positions vary so widely that rejecting “post-modernism” requires a large, complex, thorough book if it wants to avoid being merely a straw-man argument.

Your argument Nietzsche’s view of truth is self-refuting is fundamentally flawed as well. It does not follow that if Nietzsche rejects “absolute truth” all perspective are equally valid. In fact, Nietzsche argues that all views are not valid, and that truth, while indispinsable, should be held insofar as it results from creative life-forces and enhances such creativity. This doesn’t make truth an empty term, and in fact Nietzsche spills alot of ink explaining different aspects of his notion of “truth.” At the point when you say “If truth is everything, then it is nothing” I lose you. It neither constitutes a legitimate interpretation of Nietzsche or a cogent argument.

In the end you simply end up asserting your own position: that truth must be absolute, from which follows the tautological assumption that if truth is not absolute it is not truth. And while it is true that the statement “there is no truth” may be an absolute (there are arguments against this), this is not Nietzsche’s position.