10.13125/CH/5202
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2533-1825
5202
2
en
urn:nbn:it:unica-28214
Jean Greisch
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Critical Hermeneutics
Prelude: When Truth Encounters Us
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch
5
Articles
2022-04-13
2022-04-13
2022-04-14
2022-04-14
1-42
1
Jean Greisch
2021
10.13125/CH/5202
1
Institut Catholique de Paris
2533-1825
2
42
urn:nbn:it:unica-28214
Prelude: When Truth Encounters Us
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/article/download/5202/5096
5
Critical Hermeneutics, 5(2), 2021                       Received: 28/02/2022
Biannual International Journal of Philosophy            Accepted: 28/02/2022
http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/index                Published: 13/04/2022
ISSN 2533-1825 (on line); DOI 10.13125/CH/5202




               Prelude: When Truth Encounters Us1


                                     Jean Greisch




Abstract
The proposed text first appeared under the title Prélude. Quand la vé-
rité nous donne rendez-vous as an introduction to Jean Greisch’s vo-
lume, Rendez-vous avec la vérité. However, the vortex of metaphors
that ‘tell’ the ‘truth’ remains hardly reducible to a single ‘theory’ of
‘Truth’. Over the centuries, what-is-’true’ has been said in many differ-
ent ways, starting with the unsolvable opposition between the truth-
fidelity of the Jewish tradition and the truth-disclosure/manifestation
of classical Greek thought; passing through the truth-regulating,
namely the truth-institution of Roman Latin culture, which ‘contractu-
alises’ what is true; reaching up to the truths of the medieval Anglo-
Saxon world (truth-correspondence, truth-coherence, truth-semantics,
truth-consent, truth-interpretation). However, that the truth is not ob-
jectified does not mean that it is not an existential issue. On the con-
trary, this seems to be the lesson one can draw from the encounter
between Pilate and Jesus: “I am the Truth”. Nevertheless, it is possible
to observe that some of the best pages from the history of philosophy


1
    [Trans. by Annie Kunnath].
Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




are not those wondering about what the truth is, but rather those pages
allowing their own authors and readers to be questioned by the –
sometimes sudden – encounter with the disproportion of Truth. There-
fore, not theorising but encountering the truth will be a fundamental
question of philosophical research.
Keywords: rendezvous, truth, philosophical anthropology, ontology,
critical hermeneutics, wisdom, virtue.




We will never cease questioning the “variegated thing we call
‘philosophy’”2, nor stop it from questioning us.
Such enquiries can take various forms, one being a reflection on
philosophical encounters with truth.
     The simple metaphor ‘encounter’ does not seem to carry much
weight where fundamental philosophical concepts as truth are
concerned. Even the poet Paul Celan warns us against its misuse when
it comes to an encounter with truth:


     A ROAR: it is
     truth itself
     stepped among
     mankind,
     right into the
     Metaphor-flurry3.


     How then to encounter truth amid the swirling vortex of
metaphors? This question, itself expressed in metaphorical language,


2
 Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Mathematicos VII, 2.
3
 Ein Dröhnen: es ist/ die Wahrheit selbst/ unter die Menschen getreten,/ mitten ins/
Metapherngestöber (Celan 1983: 89; English translation of Pierre Joris).



2
                                                       Critical Hermeneutics, 5(2), (2021)




and liberally inspired by the principles of Hans Blumenberg’s
“metaphorology”, will be the guiding light of this book.
     The ideal of the philosopher as seeker and servant of truth found
its first literary expression in Parmenides’ Poem. Since then, many
more encounters with ‘truth’ were made or scheduled. The numerous
“theories of truth” that emerged in the twentieth-century testify that
these encounters are not about to end, for the simple reason that a
thinker who forgets that (no matter what the problem is), it is with
truth that he is first and foremost grappling with, would cease to be a
philosopher.
     By speaking of an ‘encounter with the truth’, I run the risk of
committing a double categorical contempt.
     a) At first sight, there seems to be no ground for changing the
adjective ‘true’ (denoting the quality of a proposition), into a verb
(describing an event), namely that of a ‘rendezvous’ or an ‘encounter’.
Moreover, ‘encounter’ is a polysemic word with contextual meaning.
Thus, a rendezvous between lovers, an appointment with a dentist or
a superior, or a court summons, etc. are all encounters, but of different
kinds.
     As Georges Brassens sings:


     Monseigneur the fiery sun, how little I admire him,
     Rob me off his fire, yes, but of his fire I don’t give a hoot,
     I have a tryst with you!
     The light I prefer,
     Is that of your jealous eyes,
     All the rest I couldn’t care less
     I have a tryst with you4.


4
 «Monseigneur l’astre solaire, Comme’ je n’l’admire pas beaucoup,/ M’enlèv’ son feu,
oui mais, d’son feu, moi j’men fous,/ J’ai rendez-vous avec vous !/ La lumièr’ que je
préfère,/ C’est cell’ de vos yeux jaloux,/ Tout le restant m’indiffère,/ J’ai rendez-vous



                                                                                        3
Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




     Despite being polysemous, the word ‘rendezvous’ (French rendez-
vous), shares certain identifiable family resemblances, like with the
verb ‘to surrender’ (French se rendre), and this includes its original
military meaning, where ‘rendez-vous’ becomes a command, even an
ultimatum: ‘Admit that you are defeated!’. A rendezvous with truth (if
there be any such), leaves us totally disarmed!
     It is not always necessary to schedule or arrange meetings. They
can also be unexpected. In fact, random encounters are often more
consequential than anticipated ones because these ‘create events’.
     b) By discussing ‘Truth’, it would appear that we are endorsing the
embodiment of an abstract notion, thus opening a door to every kind
of rhetorical abuse. I counter this suspicion with the following
‘hermeneutical’ argument: as long as we do not forget that we are
dealing with hypostases, embodiments can have a heuristic function.
They enable us to frame questions that we could never have even
imagined. For example, the embodiment of Wisdom in the Book of
Proverbs in the Bible permits the intensification of questions.
     It is under the aegis of the metaphor ‘encounter with Truth’ that I
propose to explore the stakes and horizons of the question: ‘what is
Truth’, by ‘repeating’, within the current intellectual debate, the same
clarifying task which Thomas Aquinas undertook in his De Veritate.
     If, as a hypothesis, we agree to define philosophy as “a knowledge
of Truth” (as Aristotle does in the first chapter of the Book of
Metaphysics 993b 20), how best to define the state of mind required
for this kind of research? Or, to ask the question in a more figurative
language: if, in some way or the other, the philosopher has an
‘encounter’ with Truth, what insight can be gained from this encounter?


avec vous». Georges Brassens, J’ai rendez-vous avec vous. [The English translation
is mine; A.K.].




4
                                               Critical Hermeneutics, 5(2), (2021)




     I shall answer this question by first of all reflecting on three texts,
of distinct literary styles. Although these texts do not offer an
exhaustive answer, they do give us abundant food for thought, even if
it is just through the sheer power of the images used. The reading I
propose will constitute the ‘overture’ (in the near musical sense of the
term), of our research.
     Furthermore, I shall also make two observations, one relating to
the vocabulary, and the other to the limits of this work.


1. The archer and the target (Aristotle)
1. It is just as well to begin our enquiry with a word of confidence and
encouragement as found at the beginning of Book Alpha of the
Metaphysics (and which provides the link between Books A and B).
     Apart from the thorny problems of textual criticism (the
authenticity of the text has been questioned since antiquity), what
strikes the reader from the outset is the text’s focus on the word ‘truth’,
a rare occurrence in Book A. One could almost speak of a scaled-down
De   veritate. From    the   very   beginning,    Aristotle    reassures us
(apprentice philosophers), that we should not be too quick to give in
to discouragement, believing that the investigation (theoria) of truth
would be too tough an enquiry for us!
     Aristotle does not declare: “After me the deluge!”, thereby
implying, “I hold the definitive truth”; nor does he claim: “Before me,
there was only error!”. On the contrary, he is aware that he is heir to a
long line of seekers of truth, and that the search will not end with him.
     This is what he is expressing through the proverbial image of an
archer aiming at a target
     as big as a door. One must indeed be very clumsy to miss it!
     “The study of Truth is in one sense difficulty, in another easy. This
is shown by the fact that whereas no one person can obtain an ade-
quate grasp of it, we cannot all fail in the attempt […] Thus in so far as



                                                                                5
Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




it seems that Truth is like the proverbial door which no one can miss”
(Met 1, 993a 30-b 7).
     This word of encouragement, however, holds a warning: “but the
fact that we cannot, although having some grasp of the whole, grasp
a particular part, shows its difficulty” (Met 1, 993a 30-b 7). It is not
sufficient to reach truth; one must also know the kind of truth one has
reached. To take recourse to Aristotle’s archery and the target meta-
phor: one must localise the arrow’s point of impact.
     It is our responsibility to carry out this task of ‘localization’; we
cannot avoid it by claiming that the truth is inaccessible. A second im-
age, one which Heidegger was fond of quoting, might be useful here:
For “just as it is with bats’ eyes in respect of daylight, so it is with our
mental intelligence in respect of those things which are by nature most
obvious” (Met. 993b 10; cf. Met. Z, 3, 1029b 4).
     Aristotle (whose footsteps Thomas Aquinas would follow), shows
an open-mindedness that is quite rare among scholars. He was inter-
ested in the views of even those whose opinions he did not share, even
if this was only because it obliged him to verify his own arguments. As
Paul Ricoeur often told me: the philosopher must not meet his oppo-
nent in their weakness, but in their strength!
     It is in the wake of these two images that Aristotle introduces phi-
losophy as a ‘knowledge of truth’. What justifies this definition is that
philosophy is a theoretical science distinct from practical sciences for it
aims neither at the production of work (poièsis), nor an action (praxis).
     Without mentioning the subdivisions of the theoretical (physics,
mathematics, theology) and practical sciences (poiesis, praxis), which
he discusses elsewhere, Aristotle states that the sole aim of ‘specula-
tion’ – theoretic knowledge (theoria) is the search for truth: “The object




6
                                              Critical Hermeneutics, 5(2), (2021)




of theoretic knowledge is truth, while that of practical knowledge is
action” (Met. 993b 27).
    But what does it mean ‘to know truth’?
    The theory of the four causes that Aristotle presents in Book A
provides an initial insight: knowledge of the truth is knowledge of
causes. This does not mean that mere knowledge of the causes would
drain the whole idea of truth! What matters to Aristotle is that there is
a hierarchy of truths based on that of causes. There are fundamental
truths and derived truths: “the first principle of things must necessarily
be true above everything else” (Met. 993b 27). Eternal truths matter
more than contingent truths. Aristotle concludes his meditation by for-
mulating an axiom that introduces us to the very heart of our problem:
“so as each thing is in respect of existence, so it is in respect of truth”
(Met. 993b 31-32)!
    2) Before we take leave of Aristotle (temporarily, and not perma-
nently), let us look briefly at Book Gamma of the Metaphysics. It opens
with great fanfare thus: “There is a science which studies Being qua
Being, and the properties inherent in it in virtue of its own nature”. This
‘ontological’ definition of the task of the ‘first philosophy’ asserts that
the ‘knowledge of truth’ that philosophy is, may not be reduced to the
knowledge of causes. This is confirmed by a statement in the second
chapter: “Being qua Being has certain peculiar modifications, and it is
about these that it is the philosopher’s function to discover the truth”
(Met. 1004b 15).
    What makes the search for truth difficult is that “Being is said in
many ways”: to on legetai pollachôs (Met. 1002b 30). It is this very
reason (being as having various senses), that forbids us from conceiv-
ing being as whole that only needs to be sliced in order to be




                                                                               7
Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




understood – just like a cake. But that is precisely the point: “Being
qua being” is ‘not a cake’!
     The concern then is that this irreducible multiplicity of meanings
of being may endanger the unity of the ‘sought-after science’ (epistèmè
zêtoumenè) that Aristotle seeks to establish. He strives ardently to
avoid this danger, arguing that “it pertains to one science to study Be-
ing qua Being, and the attributes inherent in it qua Being” (Met. 1005a
13-14).
     What is taken for granted at the end of the second chapter of the
Book is finally not so obvious, for the problem continues to be discussed
in the third chapter, in which Aristotle defines the philosopher by his
ability “to establish the firmest principles of all beings”. From the
knowledge of causes we now move on to the knowledge of principles.
Among these, it is the principle of contradiction that holds the philoso-
pher’s attention: “It is impossible for the same attribute to belong and
not belong at the same time, to the same subject and in the same
respect” (Met. 1005b 20).
     For example, it is impossible to affirm that I am both bald and
hirsute at the same time, except perhaps by wearing a wig; but then,
this would introduce a different “relationship” altogether!
     The principle of contradiction applies not only to propositions, but
also to things themselves: “it is impossible at once to be and not to be”
(Met. 1006a 1). One should not invoke the various senses of being to
undermine the objective validity of the principle of contradiction, for
even though the word ‘be’ has several meanings, each of these mean-
ings must be specified. When I quote Goethe: “Über allen Gipfeln ist
Ruh…”5 (“over all the mountains is peace”), and when I say: “I am
sick”, I am attributing to the copula ‘be’ very different meanings;


5
 See the list of examples cited by Heidegger in his lecture course Einführung in die
Metaphysik, Ga 40: 95–96 (Heidegger 2000: 93). List reworked for the lecture course
Grundbegriffe, summer semester 1941, Ga 51, p. 30-32 (Heidegger 1985).



8
                                                    Critical Hermeneutics, 5(2), (2021)




however, I have no justification to say in the same breath: “I am sick
and in good shape”.
       Certainly, Aristotle would have been puzzled to hear the Mallorcan
storytellers wrap up their stories with the routine formula: “It was and
it was not!”.6 For Aristotle, it is obvious that “the term ‘to be’ or ‘not to
be’ has a definite meaning; so that not everything can be ‘so and not
so’” (Met. 1006a 30). This is a “self-evident truth”, and it would be as
futile to try to argue about it as to try to justify it. This profound cer-
tainty, makes Aristotle concludes – a conclusion decisive for his under-
standing of language, and of being:


       for not to have one meaning is to have no meaning, and if
       words have no meaning there is an end of discourse with oth-
       ers, and even, strictly speaking, with oneself; because it is
       impossible to think of anything if we do not think of one thing
       (Met. 1006b 5-12).


       The condition for determining the meaning (a name has a definite
meaning and a unique significance), is valid both for subjects as well
as for predicates. In Strawsonian terms: the “identifying function” and
the “attributive function” of a language7. Just as I cannot describe Soc-
rates as bald and hairy at the same time, I also cannot say that he is
man and animal, or that he is both Socrates and Plato.
       Ontology, that is, the science of being as being and its general
characteristics, must negotiate its way between two equally impracti-
cable solutions.
       The first would be a description of the world in which there are no
subjects (Strawson calls them “basic particulars”), but only attributes:


6
    “Aixo era y no era”. See Jakobson 1960: 371; Ricœur 1975: 321.
7
    Strawson 1957; See also, Pariente 1973.




                                                                                     9
Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




white, black, heavy, light, and so on. It would be a world determined
by only one meaning of being: “being by accident” (kata symbebèkos).
To maintain “that all things are accidents” (Met. 1007a 21) is an ab-
surdity, not only because such a world is inconsistent, but because the
list of accidents is infinite: “it is indeed impossible to enumerate all the
infinity of accidents” (Met. 1007a 14); and “the sum of these predica-
tions does not make a single statement” (Met. 1007b 9).
        Aristotle is quite insistent about this, not because he is fighting
chimeras, but real opponents in the sophist camp, notably Protagoras.
        The second solution, equally impractical, is that of a world in which
there are only subjects (in ontological terms: substances), with no
predicates that can be assigned to them.
        ‘White + black + red + light + heavy’, etc., does not make a
‘world’, but neither does ‘Socrates + Peter + Paul’!
        The first ‘world’, purely accidentalist, resembles a cloud that shifts
shape instantaneously; the second resembles a rock quarry where no
stones are extracted8.
        To explain how a world that is not governed by the principle of
contradiction is not only inconceivable, but also impractical, Aristotle
advances an ad hominem argument that he chooses carefully:


        Why does [a man] not walk early one morning into a well or
        ravine, if he comes to it, instead of clearly guarding against
        doing so, thus showing that he does not think that it is equally
        good and not good to fall in? (Met. 1008b 15-17).


        This question reminds us of the famous anecdote from Plato’s The-
aetetus, where an astronomer-philosopher focused on observing the
stars fails to see the well directly in his path and tumbles down,


8
    For an in-depth analysis of this approach, see: Wolff 1997.



10
                                                 Critical Hermeneutics, 5(2), (2021)




triggering the laughter of the Thracian servant girl. Now, if we accept
the invitation of Hans Blumenberg9 and study the several retellings of
this ‘primitive scene’ that punctuate the history of philosophy, we will
find that it is Aristotle who gives the first transformative re-reading of
this scene. Under Aristotle’s gaze the astronomer-philosopher has met-
amorphosed into a sophist! Not recognising the validity of the principle
of contradiction, the sophists suffer from semantic dizziness and ver-
tigo. No wonder they find themselves at the bottom of the hole!
       The ability to distinguish between the best and the worst indicates
that being “eager for truth” (Met. 1008b 28 is no mean feat; just like
the prudent human who carefully considers his steps. The task is all
the more arduous for one who “forms unqualified judgements” and
swears by opinions, for such a human “is not in a healthy relation to
the truth”! (Met. 1008b 30).
       Like error, truth too has varying degrees. One can be more or less
near or far from it. What applies to our stand in relation to truth also
extends, according to Aristotle, to truth itself: “there will be some truth
to which the truer is nearer” (Met. 1009a 1).
       The Aristotelian criticism of the “undiluted doctrine which pre-
cludes any mental determination” (Met. 1009a 5), targets a major op-
ponent: Protagoras and his proposition according to which “All appear-
ances, as it manifests itself, are true” (pan to phainomenon ho phaine-
tai aléthes einai), a proposition that Aristotle reduces (probably a bit
too hastily), to the idea that “everything that appears true to everyone
is true”.
       I will not discuss here in detail the Aristotelian critique on relativ-
ism, which led him to refute his own proposition to that of Protogoras’:
“not every appearance is real” (Met. 1010b 1). I will only emphasise
that the proposition: “the phenomenon in so far as it appears” (Met.


9
    Blumenberg 1987.



                                                                                 11
Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




1009b 1), cannot leave phenomenologists indifferent. For, to what ex-
tent can we trust appearances as true? Is there a ‘phenomenological
truth’, and if so, what does it entail? Does not the notion of “truth
phenomenon”, often used by Heidegger, contain a contradictio in
adiecto?
        What troubles Aristotle in the theory of Protagoras and his peers
is the implicit assumption that truth is likely to be “judged by the num-
ber or fewness of its upholders” (Met. 1009b 2). But truth does not
negotiate through votes, or a bidding process! In a democracy, major-
ity does not mean right.
        Aristotle recognises the force of his sensualist opponents, but he
does not yield to the temptation to denigrate them outright. What stops
him from doing so, is the literary authority of Homer.10 In the delirium
of his injury, Hector “thinks other thoughts, which implies that those
who think wrongly still have thoughts, though they are no longer the
same”. This example puts Aristotle in a quandary: “if both are kinds of
thought, reality also will be ‘both so and not so’” (Met. 1009 b 30). If
‘it thinks’ even in delirium, it may well be that there is some truth even
in madness!
        Aristotle’s confidence (well evident while proposing the image of
the archer and the target), quickly crumbles, giving in to discourage-
ment that is best illustrated through yet another proverb: “the pursuit
of truth will be chasing birds in the air”.
        And even though Aristotle is quick to restore our trust, he has
however left us with two contrasting images from proverbial wisdom
that are infinitely thought-provoking: the target that is almost impos-
sible to miss, and the birds in flight that are almost impossible to catch.




10
     Iliad XXIII, b 98.



12
                                              Critical Hermeneutics, 5(2), (2021)




2. Oedipus and the Sphinx (Nietzsche)
According to Walter Benjamin, the quotations in his writings are like
highwaymen who strip the idle reader of his certainties. Ever since the
first time I opened a philosophy book (I was a high school student and
the book in question was Romano Guardini’s The World and the Per-
son), I have been a victim of countless robbers. Paradoxically, far from
reducing me to nothing, these destabilising encounters never ceased
to keep me awake and Argus-eyed, I would say that they enriched me
in the sense of what Franz Rosenzweig calls “experiential thinking”
(erfahrendes Denken)11. In fact, one of the sparks that ignited the
questions I am grappling with in this book was Rosenzweig’s phrase:
“I believe that there are moments in the life of every living being, even
a single moment, when he speaks the truth”12.
       In order to ‘speak the truth’, one must have encountered it. In the
preface to Beyond Good and Evil. Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future,
written in June 1885 in Sils-Maria in the Upper Engadin, Nietzsche em-
phasises that the gender of the noun ‘Truth’ is feminine. Like a woman,
truth wants to be seduced and won over, something that dogmatic,
self-assured philosophers are incapable of doing.
       From the very first paragraph of Part I which deals with ‘The prej-
udices of philosophers’, Nietzsche questions what is “will to truth, or
‘truthfulness’” (Wahrhaftigkeit), thought to characterise the attitude of
philosophers, unlike that of sophists. What is this “will to truth”? Or, as
he had written in his first edition of the same paragraph: what is “as-
piration to truth” (Verlangen nach Wahrheit)? (Nietzsche 1967 [KSA]:
14, 346). It is also in this same first edition that he admits that this is




11
     Rosenzweig 1984.
12
     Rosenzweig 2002: 521.



                                                                              13
Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




a very difficult question, but also the most deserving (fragwürdigste
aller Fragen).
        After struggling for a long time with the meaning and implications
of desire for truth, he then discusses its value. When re-examined in
the perspective of the will to power, it transforms into a question of the
“will to truth”.
        What strikes Nietzsche right from the start, is the figure of Oedipus
before the Sphinx. When faced with the question: “What is truth?”, we
too find ourselves in Oedipus’ situation. We have to find an answer at
all costs – it is a matter of life and death! At the same time, the ques-
tion that is strictly Nietzschean: “What is it in us that ‘tends towards
the truth’?”, redefines roles. The philosopher in the Nietzschean sense,
defined in §2 of Beyond Good and Evil as “the philosopher of the dan-
gerous, perhaps in every sense of the term” (5, 17), claims in his turn
the right to question the Sphinx the ‘Truth’:


        The problem of the value of truth presented itself to us, or
        was it we who presented ourselves to the problem? Which of
        us is Oedipus here? Who is the Sphinx? It is, it seems, an
        encounter of questions and question marks (5, 15).


        It is not possible to develop here the immense problematic of the
Nietzschean status of truth13. I will therefore limit myself with a caveat
from Nietzsche’s text: contrary to appearances, the problem of truth is
not a simple academic question; it is a risky question that comes at a
certain price, which, if necessary, can be very high! This becomes




13
     See Granier 1966.



14
                                               Critical Hermeneutics, 5(2), (2021)




apparent finally when we discover that we ourselves are implicated in
this question.
       In the Theban legend of the Oedipus, the Sphinx instigates an
enquiry that assumes the innocent guise of a riddle. Oedipus has hardly
any difficulty in figuring out the answer which is implicit in the question
“what is human?”. The answer: an animal who begins walking on four
legs, then learns to stand upright on two legs, until old age requires
him to use a walking stick.
       The significance of Nietzsche’s text can be best understood if it is
read against the backdrop of the various mythical themes underlying
the Theban legend of Oedipus. In her seminal work Oedipus; or, The
Legend of a Conqueror, Marie Delcourt identifies six major mythical
themes that first existed independently, before being merged into a
single epic narrative that underlies Euripides’ The Phoenician Women,
and Sophocles’ twin tragedies Oedipus the King, and Oedipus at Colo-
nus, the very same tragedies on which Freud based his theory of the
Oedipus complex (Delcourt 19812).
       In a fascinating investigation Delcourt (who relies on the work of
C. Robert)14, identifies these six mythical themes as: 1. the exposed
child; 2. the patricide (in reality the transfer of power between the old
and the young king); 3. the victory over the Sphinx; 4. the solution of
a riddle; 5. the hero who triumphs over a monster and marries the
princess; and, 6. the mother-son incest.
       If one wishes to understand what is at stake in Nietzsche’s enig-
matic thesis, then the third and fourth themes of Delcourt will be par-
ticularly instructive.




14
     Robert 1915




                                                                               15
Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




2.1. Vanquishing the Sphinx
The victory over the Sphinx is the core of the Theban legend retold by
the Tragedies. It represents an ordeal in the strongest sense of the
term. The best-known representation of the sphinx shows a winged
figure with a leonine body sitting on a column, with Oedipus at his feet,
absorbed in his thoughts, not very unlike Rodin’s Thinker. And, just like
a school teacher, the Sphinx is enthroned above the thinker who, like
a good student, concentrates on solving the problem at hand. This rep-
resentation suggests that his victory is above all a matter of intellectual
astuteness – by solving the riddle, the hero proves his intellectual su-
periority.
     In Greek art, there are some terrifying images, where Oedipus and
the Sphinx appear to be engaged in a frightful hand to hand combat,
and which give much food for thought on its potentially lethal nature.
These representations illustrate what is suggested by the folk etymol-
ogy of the word ‘Sphinx’, derived from the verb sphigein: ‘to choke’ or
‘strangle’. The Sphinx, holding a naked man in its claws, is a bird of
prey, ready to devour whoever crosses its path. If she were a demon-
ess, which she is in a way, she would be classified as a succubus, that
is, a female devourer of men.
     These representations emphasise the two complementary aspects
of this monstrous creature: ‘the oppressive nightmare’, and the
Seelenvogel, the soul of the dead represented as a bird. As a ‘ques-
tioning demon’, the “Sphinx is first and foremost a crushing demon”,
or rather, as Delcourt puts it, she is both a “crushing demon” and a
“soul in pain”.
     One cannot disassociate the ogress-lion (whose irruption is as ter-
rifying as that of a tornado), from the interrogator, any more than one
can separate the grieving soul from the crushing demon. This same




16
                                               Critical Hermeneutics, 5(2), (2021)




ambiguity is found in the questions which must be answered, or else
one will die crushed or suffocated.
     ‘The Anguish’: As Nietzsche suggests, in the presence of Truth, we
are in the grip of anguishing terror, unable to evade questions that
arise, a state very similar to that of Oedipus before the Sphinx. We are
therefore summoned to ask ourself what actually transpires during this
encounter, and what the defeat of the Sphinx actually means.
     In his study on demon inquisitors, Ludwig Laistner claims that the
demons subject their victims to three types of tests: caresses, blows,
and questions (Laistner 1889). Of these three, the Theban legend only
retains the last one, the intellectual test. This rationalisation relegates
a central aspect of the myth to the background: “the tempting monster
exposes itself to all the dangers it brings”. It is this “agonising” dimen-
sion that Nietzsche stresses when he suggests that the encounter with
the truth is not only a test for the human who accepts to ask himself
certain questions, but also (strange as it may seem), for Truth itself!
This is what happens in the version tragic of the legend: “the demoness
is at the mercy of the man who has answered her question”.
     As to what constitutes victory, not all answers can be traced back
to the one preferred by the Greek classics, that ‘a peaceful intelligence,
confident in itself’ will ultimately triumph over all trials. Other possible
answers must also be considered. For example, the hieros gamos:
nothing prevents Oedipus from marrying the monster to whom he has
proved his superiority. Or for that matter the slaying of the monster;
or the sharing of a secret that ensures the power of the victor.


2.2. Solving the riddle
The test imposed on Oedipus involves two distinct mythical plots: the
encounter with a demon interrogator who is defeated in the act of




                                                                               17
Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




answering its questions; and the reward (usually the hand of a prin-
cess), that awaits the person who finds the right answer.
        How to explain the contradiction between the puerility of the riddle
and the gravity of what is at stake? Why is figuring out the answer a
matter of life and death?
        The riddle is a literary genre that, like the story, appears to be a
human universal, found in all sapiential traditions. According to Hegel,
the hallmark of the struggle for recognition, itself a life-and-death
struggle, is also the structural feature of riddles; it emerges from a
questioning monster that the Christian imagination often identifies with
the ‘Grand Inquisitor’, the devil.
        According to Delcourt, there are two fundamental types: the
“thing you have to know’ or the “thing you have to understand”.
        In the first type, the person questioned must prove that it been
initiated into a secret, or that it knows the esoteric name of a thing or
a being, and who could perhaps be the questioner himself. Riddles of
this type are the remnants of “the old popular belief that one has a
hold on a being as soon as one is master of its name”.
        It is the same search for a secret name of power that some exe-
getes find in the biblical narrative of the Revelation of the divine Name
in Exodus 3:1415.
        The enigma that the Sphinx poses to Oedipus has a distinct char-
acter, which one might be inclined to call anthropological (the answer
to the question as to which animal has four feet in the morning, two at
noon and three at night, is ‘man’), and hermeneutical (to understand
in which way the question concerns Oedipus’ own ipseity).
        Even if the formulation of the riddle and its answer goes beyond
the search for a name of power or a shared secret, we cannot forget
that the reference to the bipedal nature of man is already present in


15
     Ricoeur, La Cocque 1998: 307–310.



18
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the proper name of Oedipus (Oi-dipous), who, moreover, is physically
deformed: he is lame. There is a kind of circularity between the riddle
(tetrapous, tripous, dipous) and Oedipus’ very name. The question is
therefore not quite neutral. For, underlying the general question,
“What is man?”, we can discern yet another question, which the ‘lame’
Oedipus (brilliantly represented in Francis Bacon’s painting), would
have had great difficulty in answering: “Who are you, Oedipus?”. The
answer to this question, one involving his ‘narrative identity’, will be
answered in the tragedy, or rather in the tragedies, for we must not
forget that Oedipus the King is followed by Oedipus at Colonus.
    Again, from a comparative point of view, in tune with what
Delcourt calls the “myth of the enigma”, we can link it with two major
themes: the struggle with the monster, and the conquest of a fiancée
of royal blood.
    A biblical example of the second type is found in the narrative of
Solomon’s encounter with the Queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10:1-10). Still
another example is the story of Turandot, told by Nizami in The Seven
Beauties, a story that had significant impact, both in literature (Gozzi,
Schiller), and in musicals (Puccini). The nuptial riddles “are always ad-
dressed to intelligence, never to the memory” and they “often take the
form of action riddles”.
    If we accept the hypothesis that the first category of riddles, linked
to the struggle with a monster, is a substitution for the anguish that
follows an oppressive nightmare, we could then compare it with an-
other biblical episode, that of Jacob’s struggle with the Angel at the
ford of Yabbok (Gen 32:23-31).
    Even if we resist the temptation to render the angel into a biblical
Sphinx, a number of elements in this text call for a closer comparison.
    a) The first (accepted by some Talmudists), is that we are dealing
with a nightmare. Jacob, well aware that his brother Esau (who is in




                                                                             19
Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




mortal conflict with him), is approaching with a troop of four hundred
armed men, has valid reason for having a very disturbed night.
     b) The struggle with the Angel, which lasts all night: “and someone
wrestled with him until the dawn” (v. 25), is about the quest for a
secret name of power: “Then Jacob asked, ‘Please tell me your name.’
He replied, ‘Why do you ask my name?’” (v. 30).
     c) The struggle ends only at dawn, which is another structural
feature of this type of myth: “the interest of the respondent is to keep
the game going until his enemy is disarmed”.
     d) I would add, for good measure (but in a lighter vein), that at
the end of this story, Jacob is somewhat more like Oedipus – he limps,
for he suffers from a debilitating sciatica:


     When the sun rose, he had passed Penuel and was limping
     with his hip. Therefore, the Israelites do not eat the sciatic
     nerve that is at the hip socket to this day, because he had
     struck Jacob at the hip socket, at the sciatic nerve (v. 32-33)!


     While concluding these reflections on the ‘Oedipal’ aspect of the
rendezvous with the truth, I wonder whether, behind the Nietzschean
comparison, there is not an indirect reference to the famous letter
Schopenhauer wrote to Goethe on 11 November 1815. Hinting at his
future works, the young philosopher writes: “I am now facing myself,
like an inexorable judge before a prisoner lying on the rack whom he
forces to answer until there is nothing more to ask”. In Schopenhauer’s
words, the judge who has to evaluate his actions and intentions is
transformed into a ruthless torturer-inquisitor.




20
                                              Critical Hermeneutics, 5(2), (2021)




     “Almost all the errors or ineffable follies”, he continues,


     which fill the doctrines and philosophies seem to me to result
     from the absence of this probity. If the truth has not been
     discovered, it is not for want of having sought it, but because
     of the will to discover again and again in its place a ready-
     made conception, or, at least, not to offend a cherished idea;
     for this purpose, it has been necessary to employ subterfuge
     against all and against the thinker himself (Ib.).


     Schopenhauer and Oedipus, the same struggle! The will to know,
that is, the will to truth, must be relentless and not recoil from any
sacrifice:
     It is the courage to go to the end of the problem that makes the
philosopher. He must be like Sophocles’ Oedipus who, seeking to un-
derstand his terrible destiny, tirelessly pursues his quest, even when
he guesses that the answer holds only horror and dread. But most of
us carry in our hearts a Jocasta begging Oedipus for the love of the
gods not to enquire further; and we give in to her, which is why phi-
losophy is where it is.
     To those who, like Schopenhauer, would be tempted to cry out:
“Holy Oedipus the Conqueror, pray for us”, should we not, when the
time comes, respond: “Have mercy on poor Jocasta”?




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Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




3. “What is truth?”: Jesus and Pontius Pilate
Even if the question “What is truth?” is part of the mandate of any self-
respecting philosopher, this question should not be limited to the phil-
osophical realm. There are many other encounters with truth, under
other horizons and in various ways.
     A very well-known encounter and one which has fascinated many
a philosopher, is in the Johannine narrative of the Passion of Jesus.
That a trial is a place for a rendezvous with the truth is self-explana-
tory. What is rather intriguing about this trial (and which lasts a total
of five hours from early morning until six in the afternoon), is the com-
ings and goings of the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, who is con-
stantly in and out of the praetorium, as if he were caught between two
stools.
     At the first hearing, Pilate, who questions Jesus about his claim to
kingship, is immediately confronted with a surprising counterquestion:
“Do you say this of yourself, or have others told you of me?” (v. 34).
The fact that the accused becomes the interrogator makes the suppos-
edly neutral arbitrator, who is not involved in the whole affair, a stake-
holder in the trial. Pilate’s retort – “Am I a Jew? Your people and the
high priests have handed you over to me; what have you done?” (v.
35) – are all clumsy attempts to regain his neutrality as a judge.
     The response of Jesus takes the form of a testimony:


     My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this
     world, my servants would have fought so that I would not be
     handed over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from here
     (v. 36).


     Saint Augustine commenting on this passage emphasises the sig-
nificance of this “not from here”: “Non ait: nunc autem regnum meum
non est hic, sed: non est hinc”. In itself, this answer would signal the



22
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end of the trial, for if Pilate took Jesus’ testimony seriously, he would
have to conclude that this man, who is not a political agitator, could
not be the subject of a trial. But instead, Pilate interprets Jesus’ testi-
mony as an open-ended political claim.
    The interrogation takes a new turn from the moment when Jesus,
questioned about his claim to kingship, identifies his mission as that of
a witness to truth, a truth that would not leave anyone indifferent:


    I was born for this,
    I came into the world for this,
    to bear witness to the truth;
    and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice (Jn
    18:37).


    Even though Pilate’s reaction is in the grammatical form of a ques-
tion: “What is truth?” (Jn 18:38), it has the intended (or performative)
meaning of a dismissal, and can imply both “I am not interested in the
truth”, as well as “The truth is not my concern or my problem, because
I, the judge must enforce the law and decide whether you are guilty or
not”.
    Pilate’s interrogation ends with a presumption of innocence: “I find
no case against him” (Jn 18:38), a statement that he will repeat three
more times before he yields to the clamouring crowd and hands Jesus
over to them.
    Pilate’s question to Jesus: “What is truth?” is grammatically cor-
rect, but it was phrased in a manner as to reject right outright all pos-
sible answers.
    It is not sufficient to ask the question: “What is truth?”. What is
important is to assume it fully, which means, as Heidegger suggests in
§2 of Sein und Zeit (where he describes the formal structure of the
question of being), that even a superfluous enquiry (Untersuchung) on



                                                                              23
Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




truth (an enquiry is earnest only insofar as it is at the same time a
quest – Suche), which concerns the questioning subject, has three di-
mensions: Gefragtes (the ‘questioned’), in other words, the thing that
is being questioned; that of the Begfragtes (‘interrogated’), that is, the
thing (or the person) under investigation (in the Jerusalem Praetorium,
the interrogated is Jesus himself); that of the Erfragtes (‘asked’), “that
with which the questioning reaches the goal”, by manifesting what is
at stake.
     ‘What is x?’ is not the only method of questioning. In some cases,
the question Who? is as much, if not more, important. If Pilate shrugs
off the question “What is truth?”, it is because he has bypassed the
question who: who is the one speaking to him?, bearing witness to a
truth that can only be attained through him. However, in his question
to Jesus “Where are you from?” (Jn 19: 8), Pilate seems to have
glimpsed the link between the questions “What is truth?” and “Who is
this man?”.
     “God loveth adverbs; and cares not how good, but how well,” said
Joseph Hall. This maxim alerts us to the importance of the question:
‘How?’. There are many possible ways of understanding ‘how?’. Thus,
the existential approach of Kierkegaard, who in his Postscript to the
Philosophical Fragments emphasises on the how of the subjective re-
lationship between the knower and the truth; the phenomenological
method, which studies the modes of manifestation and givenness of
truth; a methodological approach that can be resumed in the maxim,
“The shortest way to the why of things is through the how of their
manifestation”.


4. Lost/found in translation: words to say the “truth”
The authors of the article “Truth” in the Dictionary of Untranslatables:
A Philosophical Lexicon, point out that, despite differences, all Euro-
pean languages have integrated, “in an approximately equal manner”



24
                                               Critical Hermeneutics, 5(2), (2021)




[my-emphasis], “an evolution that has freed the notion of truth from
its initial poetic, religious and legal context, constituted it as a concept
of philosophy, and then introduced it into the field of science”.
     They add the hypothesis of three main paradigms that underlie
the theoretical developments of the notion of truth in the Western tra-
dition: the Hebrew paradigm of Truth-Fiability; the Greek paradigm of
Truth-Disclosure; and the Latin paradigm of Truth-Order.
     This hypothesis can be traced back to the Orthodox philosopher
and theologian Paul Florensky (1882-1943), who like so many other
Russian intellectuals, died in the Solovki prison camp. A friend and col-
league of Sergei Bulgakov, Florensky defended his thesis entitled On
Spiritual Truth before the Moscow Academy of Theology, in 1912. This
‘essay on Orthodox theodicy’ was expanded and reworked, and pub-
lished in 1914 as The Column and the Foundation of Truth.
     It was while meditating on life’s caducity and mortality that Floren-
sky discovers in himself the desire for an imperishable life: “Everything
slides into death’s abyss. Only One abides, only in Him are constancy,
life, and peace” (12).
     It was a verse from the First Epistle to Timothy, which describes
“the Church of the living God” as “the pillar and support of the truth”
(stulos kai hedraiôma tès alètheias, 1 Tim 3: 15), that gave him a fore-
glimpse of the “total and eternal Truth”, “the one Divine Truth”, distinct
from the “particular and fragmented human truths, which are unstable
and blown about like dust chased by the wind over mountains” (12).
     But, before asking what certitude (and which theoretical thinking
emphasises) can confirm, it is imperative to know what we mean by
‘Truth’. Florensky recalls that the Russian word for truth, ‘istina’, is
linguistically close to the verb ‘est’: to be (istina - estina). From the
outset, it is the ontological dimension that is emphasised (true = au-
thentic = real). One can almost rewrite Parmenides: being and truth
are the same! The root of the verb ‘to be’ can also signify ‘to breathe,



                                                                               25
Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




to live, to be’. When understood in this way, truth is “existence that
abides, that which lives, living being, that which breathes, i.e., that
which possesses the essential condition of life and existence” (16).


4.1 Emeth: Truth, a matter of trust (the Hebrew paradigm)
The Hebrew term ‘émèt, translated as alètheia in the Septuagint,
shares etymological roots that connotes reliability: that on which one
can count on; in other words, the reliability that is constant, proven
over time. This reliability has a double justification, historical and the-
ocratic.
     The people of the Promise have an experience of salvation and
liberation which gives them unparalleled confidence. Emet-truth, has a
privileged relationship with the future.
     It is not so much a question of relevance of a particular condition,
as of a fulfilment of a promise. ‘Truth’ “is less the permanence of what
is above time than the guarantee of a continuity beyond the distance
introduced by it.” It is on to this core meaning that the associated val-
ues of ‘security’ and peace (shalom) are grafted (Is. 39:8; Jer. 33:6).
     God, the Master of history, is the God of the Covenant, bound to
His people by an agreement that He will not breach, not even if the
people are unfaithful. Because He keeps His promises, the God of the
Bible is a “God of truth” (Ps. 31:6); an epithet endorsed by divine self-
identification in Exodus 34:6: “Yahweh, Yahweh, God of tenderness
and compassion, slow to anger, rich in faithful love and constancy”. A
more literal rendering of the latter term would be ‘rich in truth’ (‘émèt).
It is in the same spirit that one can read Isaiah 7:9: “If you will not
take your stand on me, you will not stand firm”. In the end, it is all a
matter of trust in divine truth, in other words, completely reliable.
     Floresky’s phrase “Truth is Security” captures concisely the es-
sence of the matter. Of course, Security does not mean “State Secu-
rity” like the KGB which found a complicit propaganda organ in the



26
                                              Critical Hermeneutics, 5(2), (2021)




Pravda, a newspaper so very injudiciously named. A buttress: these
meanings of the Hebrew word draw us nearer to the symbol of the
“Pillar of Truth”. The liturgical word of consent: ‘Amen’ belongs to the
same lexical category. It is no coincidence that in the Apocalypse of
John this Amen is personified: “This is what the Amen says, the faithful
and true witness” (Rev 3:14).


4.2. Alètheia: the truth that reveals itself (the Greek paradigm)
As Marcel Detienne emphasises in his important study on the “Masters
of Truth in ancient Greece”, one cannot rest content by just listing the
various literary occurrences of the term Alètheia among the Greek au-
thors. It is also necessary to ask “if truth, as a mental category, is not
solidary of a whole system of thought, itself inseparable from the ma-
terial and social life”.
     The Greece’s terrain includes many types of grottoes, caves, and
‘crypts’, inhabited by more or less ominous presences, often evoked in
the myths. It is not difficult to fathom the concern of the Greeks: what
could be lurking in these hollows? Or, what is going in and what will
come out?
     Even if the “myth of the cave”, which I will discuss later, is a lit-
erary fiction created by Plato to demonstrate a philosophical problem,
in other words an allegory, it resonates with many other elements as-
sociated with Greek mythology. Given the central importance that this
allegory places on the contrast between the hidden and the visible, it
is possible to read it as an allegory of Truth-Manifestation.
     While the Hebrew emèt challenges us with a dialectic of trust and
distrust, the Greek alètheia challenges us with a dialectic of the hidden
and the visible. The premise of this understanding is that


     forgetting was for the Greek mind not a simple absence of
     memory, but a special act that destroyed part of the reality



                                                                              27
Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




     of what was forgotten; in other words, not a defect of
     memory, but the force of forgetting. This force was the force
     of time that devours everything (19).


     In Hesiod’s Theogony (v. 227; 210-232), Lethe is part of the fu-
neral procession of the daughters of the Night: Sorrow, Hunger, Suf-
fering, False Words and Perjury. Yet, something resists the all-consum-
ing force of oblivion:


     The truth for the Greek is a-lètheia, what can remain from
     the flow of the oblivion, from the lethal course of the sensible
     world, something which overcomes the time, which maintains
     itself without flowing, and which keeps eternally the memory.
     Truth is the eternal memory of a certain Consciousness. It is
     a value worthy of and capable of perpetual commemoration
     (Ib.).


     The truth, we could say, is “the being not forgotten”, or that must
not be forgotten, that is, literally, the unforgettable.
     The adjective aléthes, older than the noun, is composed of the
privative alpha and the root léthos, and denotes that which is hidden
or concealed, a type of this concealment being oblivion. The oft-quoted
classic example is that of Ulysses who on hearing the Aedes singing
the Iliad hides his tears that would otherwise betray his emotion16.
     The etymological derivative of the term that connotes “un-con-
cealment” (or de-occultation, or dis-closure distinct from “foreclo-
sure”), plays an important role in the Heideggerian concept of Truth17.
By translating the Greek term as Un-verborgenheit (rendered in


16
   Odyssey, VIII, 93.
17
   For etymological details see: Boeder 1959: 82–112; Helting 1997: 93–107; see
also: Snell 1978.



28
                                               Critical Hermeneutics, 5(2), (2021)




English as “unconcealment” and in French as “désoccultation”),
Heidegger follows a tradition that was widespread in the nineteenth
century: “Unverstecktheit” (“un-concealed”, F. Passow, 1841); “das
Unvergessene, l’inoublié” (O. Willmann, 1907²); “Unvergessenheit
oder Unverborgenheit” (Nicolaï Hartmann). This translation is not re-
stricted to the Germanic world; it is also referred to by C.S. Peirce18.
        In his 1922/23 course on Systematic Philosophy, Paul Natorp de-
fined being as that which is “purely and simply manifest” (schlechthin
offenbar), similar to light itself. This “original openness” (ursprüngliche
Erschlossenheit) where everything is uncovered, unconcealed, this Un-
verborgenheit, is the immediate, indubitable truth of being, “offered
without reluctance to whoever is open to it and does not close himself
to it”.
        It was in October of the same year 1922, that Heidegger translates
for the first time Alètheia = Unverborgenheit, in his research report
entitled, Phenomenological Interpretation of Aristotle, hastily written
in view of his candidacy for the position of Extraordinarius professor.
From that time onwards, Heidegger will not cease from emphasising
the distinctiveness of the Greek understanding of Truth-declosion, to
the risk of being criticized by some as of succumbing to questionable
etymologism. He will defend himself against these criticisms in his 1954
conference entitled Alètheia, a meditation on Heraclitus’ fragment 16.
        Those who, like Heribert Boeder, criticize the Heideggerian “ety-
mologism”, point out that Homer uses the adjective alètheiè in an ex-
clusive manner linked with verbs denoting the act of saying. Since clas-
sical antiquity, excepting a few allusions, the etymology of the word
alètheia no longer played the same role it once did. Alèthè legein, ‘to
speak truth’ and the conditions of its possibility, are now more im-
portant. In these uses, the adjective ‘true’ is replaced by onta, the


18
     Peirce 1892; Peirce 1935: 32.



                                                                               29
Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




being. To ‘speak truth’ is to say ‘what is’. Truth is not primarily the
characteristics of certain utterances, but is identified with a given fact,
the decisive question being whether the thing is ‘really’ and ‘authenti-
cally’ what it seems or claims to be.
     Right from the start, the problematic of truth overlaps with that of
being and appearance which, together with that of being and becom-
ing, formed, according to Heidegger, the principal axis on which ancient
ontology was developed.
     In her book L’effet sophistique, Barbara Cassin quotes the treatise
Peri alètheias of Antiphon, the sophist and orator of the fifth century
B.C. (480-411 B.C.), which transposes the same opposition on the po-
litical level: one can escape (lathei, literally ‘to hide oneself’, ‘to evade’)
the laws of the city, but no one can escape the natural law which is, in
this sense, ‘truer’ than the former.
     The relevant distinction between the adjective ‘true’ and the noun
‘truth’ in daily usage is that of the real and the unreal. The real is the
true, and all that is not real is not true. Hence, our spontaneous cry:
“It’s not true!” when we hear unbelievable news.
     Conversely, the Greek counterpart to our adjective ‘real’ is etu-
mos, the core of the word ‘etymology’, and which provides its epon-
ymy. Democritus made it a technical term in his atomic theory to dis-
tinguish the effective reality as opposed to sensible qualities. To etu-
mos, the effective reality, is opposed pseudos. We can therefore claim
that the ‘false’ is always a pseudo-reality, a mimetic duplicate of etu-
mos. In such a context, the term alètheia can hardly be reduced to the
simple alternative of true and false!


4.3. Veritas or regulatory truth (the Roman paradigm)
Even if there is no evidence that the Greek alètheia is essentially un-
translatable into Latin – for how else can we explain Tertullian’s adage,
“Truth has no shame except to be hidden”? – the Latin adjective verus



30
                                               Critical Hermeneutics, 5(2), (2021)




goes back to the Indo-Germanic root *wer meaning benevolence and
its expressions: gifts, protection, fidelity, pact. The truth is benevolent,
or it is not! The man with a heart of stone severs himself off from the
truth: he is se-verus!
     The Latin veritas is derived from the root var with claims to a cultic
domain. In Sanskrit the root vra-ta refers to a sacred act, such as a
vow or a promise. Truth ‘is sacred’, which in turn suggests that only
the sacred is true! According to some etymologists, the root ver found
in the word verbum, and in words from the family of vereor, revereor
(= ‘to fear’, ‘to respect’), verecundia, refers to reverential fear. Truth
is that which is revered, especially the word that utters truth. This et-
ymological derivation was often preferred in ancient times, for exam-
ple, Saint Augustin who glosses over the word verbum with verum
boare: ‘to proclaim the truth’.
     According to Florensky, “strictly speaking, verus means protected
or grounded in the sense of that which is the object of a taboo or con-
secration”, of a vow or consecration. In modern parlance, this meaning
could be expressed as ‘Touche pas à ma vérité!’ (‘Hands off my truth’).
     The Latin veritas has primarily a juridical sense. Verus, veritas
mean “the truth of the rule, insofar as it is distinct from usage”. The
verdict is the judge’s sentence that must be respected. Veritas came
to be used as a noun rather tardively. Mainly found in the legal sphere,
it received a philosophical and gnoseological meaning only with Cicero.
     This legal connotation is further reinforced in Late Latin, and will
be retained in the Middle Ages, where verus signifies ‘legitimate’, le-
gally authenticated, conforming to enacted law.
     In a sense, one could say that “to be in order” is synonymous with
“to be in the truth”.
     If verus signifies ‘authentic’, then this meaning must also be taken
in the legal sense of the act of authentication. A ‘true’ Caravaggio is a
painting that has been authenticated by a court-appointed expert. The



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Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




relentless battle that certain luxury brands wage against counterfeits
(a fake Lacoste shirt, a fake Hermes scarf, etc.), shows the importance
that we still attach to this idea of truth, in which the legal sense over-
determines not only the moral, but also the ontological sense.
       This same legal overdetermination characterizes the uses of the
noun veritas. What is expected of a witness in court is that he should
tell ‘the truth and nothing but the truth’. Being sincere is not enough –
as in the case of the famous statement of the French politician who
while leaving the court where he had been caught in the act of perjury
said: “Certainly, I lied, but I was sincere!”. The witness must be unim-
peachable, verus testis, a reliable witness, rendered in English as truth-
ful.
       This is how the authors of the article “Truth” in the Dictionary of
Untranslatables conclude their description of this third paradigm:


       […] truth comes to be instituted, but not uncovered. Veritas
       qualifies an accreditative function, the power of having the
       last word, according to Roman law: ‘The judgment holds the
       thing to be true’ (res judicato pro veritate accipitur) (Digest,
       50, 17, 207). Veritas is performative: it does not designate a
       relation of adequacy between the utterance and reality but
       enacts the authority of judgment, the well-founded juridical
       utterance (1165).


       In a brilliant synthesis of his hypothesis, Florensky writes:


       […] for the Hebrews, Truth is not an ontological concept, as
       it is for the Slavs. It is not an epistemological concept, as it
       is for the Greeks. And it is not a juridical concept, as it is for




32
                                             Critical Hermeneutics, 5(2), (2021)




    the Romans. Instead, it is a historical, or rather, a sacred-
    historical concept, a theocratic concept (Florensky 1974: 19).


    And as a further development of his hypothesis, Florensky sug-
gests conjugating the Russian istina and the Hebrew ‘emet, insofar as
they refer primarily to the divine content of truth, as opposed to the
Greek alétheia and the Latin veritas which privilege its human form.
And as to truth’s relationship with philosophy, Russian and Greek are
on the same side of the fence, whereas Hebrew and Latin privilege the
sociological aspect of social mediation.
    As audacious as these suggestions maybe, they have an undenia-
ble heuristic fruitfulness that I shall explain by referring to Levinas’
remark in the Preface to his Totality and Infinity: “Our Western civili-
zation”, he says,


    is an essentially hypocritical civilization”, because it is “at-
    tached both to the True and to the Good, henceforth antago-
    nistic”. And he adds, “It is perhaps time to see in hypocrisy,
    not only a base contingent defect of man, but the underlying
    rending of a world attached to both the philosophers and the
    prophets (Lévinas 1974: 24).


    Taking the meaning of the term ‘hypocrisy’ in the Levinasian sense
I would say that our relationship with truth is also, “essentially hypo-
critical”, insofar as we must learn to conjugate at least three paradigms
of Truth: the Hebrew Truth-Fiability, the Greek Truth-Disclosure, and
the Latin Truth-Order.




                                                                             33
Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




5. Theoria and alètheia: is truth ‘theorizable’?
Emmanuel Levinas stresses that the search for truth, “is a more fun-
damental event than theory”. Before concluding that “the relation with
others, our master, makes truth possible”, we must acknowledge that
one of the distinctive signs of the twentieth-century philosophy is the
extraordinary proliferation of ‘theories of truth’, to which we can apply
another remark of Levinas: an analysis of language that focuses on
what is said, and not on the saying, is a “respectable, considerable and
difficult work”.
     A discussion on what can or cannot be expected from the different
theories of truth (correspondence, coherence, semantic, pragmatic, re-
dundancy, consensus, and interpretation, etc.), through the looking
glass of our guiding metaphor ‘rendezvous with truth’ would require
altogether another volume.
     I shall therefore only present a few hypotheses that need to be
verified through a careful analysis of texts.
     Kant made a distinction between the “artists of reason” (the logi-
cians) and the philosophers who do not forget that they are “citizens
of the world” participating in the “great game of life”. Contemporary
theorists of truth are no doubt great “artists of reason”. Their publica-
tions often present the same degree of difficulty as that experienced
by an uninformed reader browsing through a professional journal for
chess players with analyses of world chess tournaments. While admir-
ing the intelligence of the players, with which he can hardly match, the
ordinary “citizen of the world” can, at the very least, try to get a gen-
eral understanding of the game in question, its rules, as well as the
different tactics and strategies used, without forgetting to ask: what is
this game?
     Hence the interest in asking three preliminary questions: 1. What
is a philosophical or extra-philosophical ‘theory’ of truth? 2. What can
we expect from it? 3. Does the philosophical quest for truth necessarily



34
                                               Critical Hermeneutics, 5(2), (2021)




lead to the elaboration of a ‘theory’, or is the ‘theory’ only one of sev-
eral ways to encounter truth?
        In ancient Greek, ‘theory’ is nothing but idea of truth. According
to Ross, the Aristotelian claim that philosophy as such is “the theory of
truth” (hè peri tès alétheias theoria)19, means that it has for object “the
truth in general, the final nature of things”20.
        In its modern acceptation, the term is based on the model of sci-
entific theories21. If we refer to its strict sense in contemporary science
and epistemology, that is, a system of propositions that can be tested
and verified through experiments prescribed by the model, we have
valid reasons to question, as Moritz Schlick did as early as in 193422,
whether a philosophical theory of truth can ever conform to such a
definition.
        The least we can ask of truth-theorists is that they clarify their
goals: is it the concept (meaning, significance, ‘essence’, ‘nature’,
etc.), a criterion, the conditions (or presuppositions), or the relevance
(scope) of truth that is to be determined?
        According to L.B. Puntel23, the enquiry concerning the concept of
truth can be divided into four categories: 1. What is truth? This ques-
tion aims at a definition of truth, an attempt that some philosophers,
like Donald Davidson24, consider is doomed to failure. 2. What does
‘truth’ (or ‘true’) mean? 3. What is the significance of ‘true judgment’,
‘true statement’, ‘true proposition’, ‘true assertion’? 4. What is the
meaning of ‘p is true’?
        If we move from definitional theories, which seek to define the
term ‘truth’ as precisely as possible (for example, the famous


19
     Met. 993a 30.
20
     Met. 1.
21
     Seifert 2009: 58–59.
22
     Schlick 1934: 79–99.
23
     Puntel 2009; Puntel 1990; Puntel, 1987.
24
     Davidson 1996.



                                                                               35
Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




“semantic” theory of Alfred Tarski), to criteriological theories25, we re-
alize that they are of a different kind based on the idea we have of a
‘criterion’: a decision criterion (when are we dealing with truth?), a
discovery procedure (how can we discover truth?), or a ‘yardstick’ of
truth?
        The problem becomes even more complicated if we consider the
following factors:
        1. A philosopher’s conception of truth can hardly be separated
from the rest of his philosophy. Karl Jaspers’ monumental work Von
der Wahrheit (published in 1947 as the first volume of a philosophical
logic of great scope)26, is an excellent example of this organic bond. It
is the same for Husserl and Heidegger.
        2. Not all philosophers, far from it, feel the need to write a ‘De
Veritate’, or ‘Quaestio disputata de Veritate’, or ‘Entretiens sur la vér-
ité’ as did Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, or Malebranche; but the absence
of this urge does not stop them from encountering truth.
        3. During the twentieth century, debates about truth theories have
become increasingly polarized. We must resist the temptation to re-
duce everything to a choice between two or three dominant theories,
much like the choice we make between a few major political parties at
election time. A good part of these debates consists of exchanges be-
tween ‘experts’ who ceaselessly compare their arguments and offer
their personal interpretation of their opponents’ propositions.
        4. A substantial number of these theories are explicitly presented
as revisions, developments, or clarifications of an already existing




25
     See: Rescher 1973.
26
     Jaspers 1947.



36
                                               Critical Hermeneutics, 5(2), (2021)




theory. Almost all theories of truth currently discussed have as models
the traditional correspondence theory or Tarski’s semantic theory.
       5. The key divide is between the ‘realist’ positions that credits
truth with a nature, and which Michael P. Lynch calls ‘robust’ realism
of truth, and the ‘deflationary’ theories of truth27 (the ‘realists’ would
undoubtedly call them ‘defeatists’ conceptions), which assert that the
problem of truth is merely a misunderstanding easily cleared by logical
analysis or adequate pragmatic approach.
       6. From the perspective of the ‘realists’, the rendezvous with truth
is prima facie a rendezvous with reality; on the other hand, the ‘plu-
ralist’ theories of truth make a detour through an epistemic questioning
on the validity and verifiability of our convictions and assertions, like
Hilary Putnam’s ‘internal realism’ which asserts that “it makes no sense
to think that the world is divided into ‘objects’ (or ‘entities’) inde-
pendently of our use of language”28.
       7. One of the major challenges in the debates on theories of truth
concerns the very idea of rationality29: are these theories meant to
justify the superiority of scientific practice, as Putnam asserts, and for
whom truth can be understood only as an “idealization of rational ac-
ceptability”; or, must we, as Richard Rorty advocates, renounce once
and for all the idea that science is our only reliable teacher of truth?




27
     Lynch 2001: 5.
28
     Putnam 1992: 243; Putnam 1984.
29
     See: Williams 2002.




                                                                               37
Jean Greisch, When Truth Encounters Us




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