25 On Truth and Science

Truth is an idea that shines through even the greatest untruth. That is, as Plato describes it, something eternally divine, and attribute of the gods. Without truth there is no lie, no probability. And nevertheless the image of truth deteriorates—that is, the term—that we have of it and employ for it, in order that we might achieve some consensus over it, again and again in its isothenia.

As an example of truth one might demonstrate that the source of isothenia is always to be found in a recognized subject, and entirely keeping with Kant’s meaning, that we seek to view the world each time as if with different spectacles, to conceptualize and rule it.

I have already addressed the problem of speaking-ability and speaking-desire. According to Wittgenstein and his school (“Philosophical Investigations”), every person moves through a world of their own creation, with their own language, attitudes, interests, etc. Wittgenstein denotes this “language-game,” the French would say “discourse.” Somewhat expanding on this, the Vienna philosopher “form of life.”

Reading me right now, one thus attempts to play along with my particular “language-game,” which may occasionally be truly difficult, or even impossible, to understand. On the other hand, when one understands me, or even understands me with ease, one shares some small portion of my form of life. At the least, one would have to own a computer, and perhaps be possessed of certain weakness for the new forms of blog-communication.

I say only “some small portion,” however: for this blog-writing constitutes only a part of my form of life. As a human being next to you, and to you I am most certainly an other, perhaps even an Other. You are always more than you are, more than you appear. Everything is encompassed by this metaphysical “more,” of which there ever remains something new to discover, to develop, to decipher, to find, or to invent. We are thus permanently encircled by not-knowing and mystery— our not-knowing always remains orders of magnitude greater than our knowledge. And everything is exciting and full of secrets— the I and the Other that remains to be discovered. Where, what, who is this other that has me so mysteriously, beguilingly holds me in its sway? – Jabès writes, that totality poses the questions, yet each time only the fragment can answer.

If each is always and for ever an Other, thence also speaks another language, then we must learn many foreign languages in the course of our lives. What a task stands before us! — To speak foreign languages in one’s native land. That was a provocative slogan of the German pop-group DAF, which paradoxically probably sought even to intensify the alienation among and within us. Why not? Paradoxical interventions are sometimes useful in education. I say “useful,” a small “useful” little word, in order to come perhaps a bit nearer to the mystery of Truth as idea.

For in the USA around 1900, the so-called pragmatic conception of truth took shape: true is that which is useful, which is instrumental in the matter at hand. In the interim, and in the present of 2014, one must probably be more restrictive: “true” is that which is useful to the economy, no longer to morals (in 1900 the Americans were still starkly moralist). Truth, equitableness, love, beauty— all may be purchased at the new slave-market. Have you managed yet to snag your new beloved, with his or her gold (platinum?) credit-card? — Excuse me, that was probably a bit too much, even if it seems ambiguously formulated.

For a long time I believed that physical contact with another living person could overcome this “more” (which causes alienation at first), that in this way one might create intimacy and build truthfulness. And yet the opposite is the case. In the sensual intoxication of sexuality, it caresses and passions, all is forgotten, one comes not closer, but rather remains only the self-conscious I, the trace of egoism, desire, bound to corporeal satisfaction, at least as a man.

To find an equally great intersection in the realm of our communications and interactions might be quite difficult. And thus we encounter one another, again and again, only as foreigners, even should we speak the same language and seem to understand one another and communicate with one another. Yet how far apart we are separated from one another‽ I can attempt to speak foreign languages with great empathy, sensibility, and studiousness, to learn them. And yet the intersection with my interlocutor remains tenuous as ever. I can sense, feel, my counterpart— perhaps that would be a sustainable basis; animals probably go about it in a similar fashion when they want to get acquainted (to copulate). But what of it when one can’t feel (how many men—apologies for my exaggeration—have problems with their emotional ledger, or not)?

The understanding of written language seems to me especially problematic, as must be interpreted again and again. The Deconstructivists lay the truth of a statement entirely and only at the feet of the interpreter and their “perspective.” They battle against the view that the author determines what his or her words mean. Much more, the concealed meaning of a deconstructed text reveals that the superficial meaning isn’t the real one. Truth is only what the interpreter puts into it, their view of things, and every every arbitrary interpretation seems as good as any other. In interpreting the interpreter sometimes even discloses more about him or herself than about the interpreted.

Lyotard, for this very reason, finds modern art to be good, above all if it is demanding or even incomprehensible. “What is wrong with you,” this art asks of us, “that you don’t understand me, maybe don’t even want to understand? – You should expect no information about me; rather, you’ll only receive an answer about yourself.” Modern art only ever reflects us back to ourselves and to self-reflection. In Paris 1985, Lyotard—this prophet and name-giver of Postmodernism—curated a large exhibition with the title The Immaterial, which had exactly this effect: riddles, perplexity, and mystery—exuberant and pervasive.

And what of the many fakes that have overwhelmed us of late? How are you to know that I am presently saying (or writing) the truth? Thinking within the natural sciences still provide, after all, evidence by experiment, convincingly gleaned from Karl Popper’s theories of verification and falsification. Yet what about the arts and humanities? There, one supports one’s argument from time to time on documents and quotes from “authorities,” or quarrels over strong and weak arguments, and tries to justify a natural-scientific communications theory via the humanities, as if there never were one such as Hans-Georg Gadamer.

Derrida seldom invokes other authors; his texts are not overly crowded with commentaries, references, and “reference sources,” which very often strike me as almost absurd. Perhaps he trusts in the plausibility of his course of action. I’m no longer speaking of argumentation at all, as this word has been (by language purists, as well as the relevant trained language-police) sharply restricted, constricted, indeed even neutered.

For Lyotard, all that produced intellectually (not by technical means) by the sciences of any type remains only narration, story (one probably avoids “fairy-tale”) – better terms than those used in the German translation do not occur to me. All is case-by-case, equally good and bad, sometimes relevant, useful, sometimes excessive. Especially an argumentative language cannot be used in every or any case (see my talk with him in my blog-entry from the 13th of March). For all is permitted, all is interpretation and dispute over the proper construction of a mathematical formula. A mathematician might argue that I have quite incorrectly stated the case, but you understand what I mean by it.

We are, namely, in Antiquity—this time with the Sophists, whom Lyotard greatly treasured. For Protagoras as well, everything derives from human beings, and their perspective, everything remains comparably subjectively based on the individual, his or her knowledge, interests, goals. A single truth, valid for all and thus generalizable, does not (according to him) exist.

And just this posture from Protagoras called Plato to center-stage. He claims exactly the opposite: there are timeless values and truths, but they are only accessible to thinking people, to philosophers and other truth-sayers. While the common masses languish dully in their caves with meager happiness and atrophied brains or mental faculties and the everyday … (you can fill in the rest; you know what I mean).

Likewise we have gotten to know the anarchistic concept of truth—truth is only on a case-by-case basis—as Paul Feyerabend, from whom it originated, was an anarchistic theorist of science. From the United States there arose the pragmatic concept of truth, probably the most widely accepted at present. There is also the dogmatic concept of truth: propagated (or rather indoctrinated), for example, to its own great benefit by the Communist Party for many years. There is also the logical, the theological, even the strictly mathematically formal-logic truth, and so on. There are also, more recently, lie detectors and the like, which attempt to resolve with wholly new and technical means the problem of truth—still unavailingly, as I see it.

For the artist, truth probably conforms to coherence, beauty, and the sustainability of an artwork, the moralists see the social cohesion of human civilization in peace and freedom as at the fore, and the Dadaists only see a word with seven letters (Caution! Trap!). And so on.

And what if it should come to pass, that we finally have Truth, can own it and demonstrate it, and nobody cares? When it is will and convincingly, information-theoretically, demonstrated, this artwork isn’t worth the sale price and nevertheless is purchased en masse? When we all affirm that overly complex music is great art, and yet nobody wants to listen to it? When peace studies demonstrate quite convincingly that wars are atavisms, relapses into prehistoric, thus also animalistic conditions, and nevertheless a new bloody conflict breaks out almost daily?

There is always only case-by-case, sometimes more, sometimes less. Only one truth is absolutely certain: death. And this death ought to be hindered, as I have previously written. We are, once again, with the existentialists. Regarding death there is no dispute. And it is also useful, every now and then, to look death or its precursors in the eye. I have only once in my life borne witness to a truly violent brawl. Since then, theatrical brawls in film are all inauthentic fakes, of which I feel no need to partake.
The idea of truth remains in our world and in our brain cells, nevertheless and despite it all, evermore hidden behind its weak or dishonest images. And now, perhaps it is laughing at us again in this, our great anthill. How small, how pitiful we really are, in the face of the universe and its endlessness, as Pascal says, which requires no truth or reckoning case-by-case and circles infinitely (infinitely?) onward in relation only to itself, like some enormous irrational and never wholly recognizable tautology.
Particularly when we have already penetrated so many thousands of kilometers into these foreign worlds. Also with the help of one truth, that reads E=mc².

for Albrecht Fendrich

NB: There are two excellent books from Princeton philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt concerning the nature of truth in modern society and its abuse, respectively titles On Truth and On Bullshit. The interested student may find both a helpful examination of the utility of a concept of truth (in the former) and an admonition of the perils of undermining it (in the latter).  -Ed.