Unmaking Sense

We reflect on Sophocles’ great “Oedipus Rex” and what it tells us about the obsessive, relentless pursuit of a truth that will destroy us.

The truth is not “out there”: we make it; and if we fail to make it, others will make it for us, and control us in the process to their gain and our loss.

Nothing exempts us from responsibility for the things we hold dear, the things we regard as the best for us to believe, the facts we attest. We are always responsible for whatever we do, believe, think or say. Nothing exempts us from that responsibility.

If truths are what it is best for us to believe, they serve us, not we them. Yes, that makes what it is to be human and so to dictate what we will deem true as paramount; but that has always been so, like it or not. Truth is there for us, not we for it.

We repeat the argument about civilisations preferring criteria of truth over truths as the handmaids of well-being and human thriving in the case of education.

Inversion is the way something meant to help us becomes something that tyrannises us. This easily happens with truths and facts when we find ourselves living to serve abstract truths rather than using truths to help us through life’s difficulties.

That truths can change means that perfection can change. We explore the idea and some implications.

We consider some of the implications of a view of truth and fact, as changeless. We look in particular at belief in the changelessness and authority for all time of religious texts and scriptures such as the Bible.

Refusal to justify what we believe, think, do, say and how we live our lives with reference to external authority is one consequence of rejection of metaphysics, but also the basis for the way that we grow up into responsible adults each of whom plays a full part in the democratic life of a society. To pretend that we can in the end blame external authorities for what we believe, do or say, and how we live our lives is an example of what Sartre called bad faith, and it is also an infringement of the third principle of pragmatism.

Language constantly lures us into using or understanding words in ways dictated by the past and traditional ways of thinking. We must resist this temptation, especially over matters of truth and facticity. There are no permanent unrevisable truths and facts; everything is in flux. The challenge is to find our way through the ever-changing landscape by choosing what it is best for us to believe.