The Three Truths

There are three types of truth. The first is crystalized truth which refers to the truth in God and his omniscient power.

The second is fluid. For example, what is true at one point may not be so in the future due to some unforseen circumstances. This truth is approptiated on levels. One dispute can incur multiple truths at different depths of thought.

The third is Convenient truth and differs from one person to another depending on their perceptual set.

As we are not enlightend to the full extent of Crystalized truth, we are perpetually in conflict over the Fluid truth and mostly resort to the Convenient truth.

Truth?

The oracle of Delphi, it appears, was once asked if there were any man wiser than Socrates, and replied that there was not. Socrates professes to have been completely puzzled, since he knew nothing, and yet a god cannot lie. He therefore went about among men reputed wise, to see whether he could convict the god of error. First he went to a politician, who 'was thought wise by many and still wiser by himself'. He soon found that the man was not wise, and explained this to him, kindly but firmly, 'and the consequence was that he hated me'. He then went to the poets, and asked them to explain passages in their writings, but they were unable to do so. 'Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration.' Then he went to the artisans, but found them equally disappointing. In the process, he says, he made many dangerous enemies. Finally he concluded that 'God only is wise; and by his answer he intends to show that wisdom of men is worth little or nothing.

Socrates

In 399Bc, Socrates was tried for being an evil-doer and a 'curious' person, searching into things under the earth and above the heaven; and making the worse appear the better cause and teaching all this to others. The majority of the court found him guilty.

Socrates, representing himself, was then given the chance to plead for a lesser sentence. The judges then had to choose between the sentence of the defence or prosecution. It was therefore in the interest of socrates to suggest a substantial penalty, which the court might accept as adequate. He, however proposed a fine of a mere thirty minae. This was so small a punishment that the court was annoyed, and condemned him to death by a larger majority than that which had found him guilty. Undoubtedly he foresaw the result. It was clear that he had no wish to avoid the death penalty by concessions which might seem to acknowldge his guilt.

Socrates then proceeds to examine his prosecutor Meletus, 'that good man and true lover of his country, as he calls himself'. He asks who are the people who improve the youth. Meletus first mentions the judges; then, under pressure, is driven, step by step, to say that every Athenian except Socrates improves the young; whereupon Socrates congratulates the city on its good fortune. Next, he points out that good men are better to live among than bad men, and therefore he cannot be so foolish as to corrupt his fellow-citizens intentionally, but if unintentionally, then Meletus should instruct him, not prosecute him.

Socrates was excecuted shortly after.

Protagoras

The pursuit of truth, when it is wholehearted must ignore moral considerations; we cannot know in advance that the truth will turn out to be what is thought edifying in a given society.

One of the defects of all philosophers since Plato is that their inquires into ethics proceed on the assumption that they already know the conclsion to be reached.

Parmenides

Sense is an illusion.

In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a revival of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as possible, the state of mind of a person abandoning opinions which he has hitherto held. Contempt interferes with the first part of this process, that a man whose opinions and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever. When an intelligent man expresses a view which seems to us obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that it is somehow true, but we should try to understand how it ever came to seem true.This exercise of historical and psychological imagination at once enlarges the scope of or thinking, and helps us to realize how foolish many of our own cherished prejudices will seem to an age which has a different temper of mind.

We are strangers in this world, and the body is the tomb of the soul, and yet we must not seek to escape by self-murder; for we are the chattels of God who is our herdsman, and without His command we have no right to make our escape.