TRUTH, LOGIC AND EMANCIPATION
By Franz J. T. Lee
2nd August, 2000
Spring
"The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss
our feet,
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning
sit,
In every street these tunes our ears
do greet,
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to witta-woo!
Spring! the sweet Spring!"
(Thomas Nashe)
A. Introduction
For us, philosophically, Truth (aletheia, veritas, Wahrheit) reflects the historic relation: Nature a n d Society; in this sense it is a logical concept, methodologically embedded in our Multi- or Poli-Logics.
Because Truth is at Rest
and exists in Motion, dialogically, among other operations,
it expresses historic, emancipatory
motion,
the " a n d -
relation", in the following:
Act a n d
Thought,
Praxis
a
n d Theory,
Science a
n d Philosophy,
Nature a
n d Society,
Essence a
n d Existence,
Cosmos a
n d Einai;
in nuce,
Beauty a
n d Truth.
"A
n d", as Truth, as Dialogical Relation
is NEITHER
Formal-Logical Rest
NOR
does it exist as Dialectical Motion. It includes these, but
aspires to much more. In another context, methodologically, we've explained
this already. Meanwhile, let us take a bird's eye view of some
of the world conceptions of "Truth".
B. Legend, Logics: "The Way Of Truth"
According to one of the myriad
of European legends, while living on a rock,
in Egypt, in modern Africa,
one day Parmenides of Elea (5th century BC) came on
the grand idea of inventing a method of thinking,
of reasoning, logic. He did not invent any logical principles but in his
famous poem, "On Nature" (Peri physeos), in the preface, he described
how he had been mounting his chariot, had gone for a jolly ride throughout
the beautiful meadows and gorgeous planes of the heavens, and eventually
arrived at the very seat of Aletheia, the Goddess of Truth.
With her, Parmenides had a cordial conversation, and
she taught him the secrets of truth:
"to learn all things, both
the unshaken heart of
well-rounded truth and also
what seems to mortals, in
which is no true conviction".
In the second part, after enjoying a rich meal of manna, and drinking a cup of divine nectar, the conversation continued, and she introduced him to the "Way Of Truth". she explained to him what "real and unique Being", what the One and Only, what the Hen Kai Pan is all about. Finally, they had a casual chat concerning the "Way of Opinion", about the seemingly everyday "real world", the empirical realm of changing appearances.
The third part of this Divine Comedy of Truth anybody could enjoy in Plato's Doctrine of Ideas, and the final part, was presented by Aristotle in his Doctrine of Form and Substance, ideologically epitomized in his Formal Logics. In fact, this is the labour pain, the monstrous birth of working, workable Ideology, of future Orwellian Body, Mind and Thought Control, of Fascism, Stalinism, Nazism and Globalization.
Ever since, all future "Western" philosophers, in the
search of eternal, systemic, systematic aletheia, of "truth", were
not just proposing some religious myths or ideological fantasies, they
were also preoccupied to utilize extended logical, truthful arguments
for their manipulative views; in the last analysis, this happened within
the generalized context of the preservation and conservation, not
of Nature but of labour reality, of the exploitative, oppressive, alienating
status
quo. This, then, in slave-owning "society", was the painful birth of
Occidental, Christian, Civilized Logic & Truth.
A = A; A is absoltely "true"; non-A is eternally "false".
"Good" is good, it can never be "Non-Good", i.e., be false. A "good leader"
is great, is good, is true.
The first logical rules, in embryo, were developed by Parmenides' brilliant disciple, Zeno of Elea, the author of the famous "Paradoxes". Thereafter, many Ancient Greek rhetoricians, dialecticians and sophists like Gorgias, Hippias, Prodicus, Protagoras and Socrates appeared on the logical scene, and were eagerly developing their techniques of argument, were presenting their own "eristic", their verbal displays of debating skills. Protagoras began to distinguish different kinds of sentences: questions, answers, and injunctions. Prodicus busied himself with synonyms, and claimed that no two words could have the same connotation. As we all know, Plato and Aristotle perfected Logic, and gave it an ideal, a formal character.
Till today, we argue like them; as such, in our arguments, in our scientific and philosophic works, in our online chats and debates, we distinguish between "Truth" and "Non-Truth" or Falsehood. Although Kant, Hegel and Marx had refined dialectics, not even their own "Left" could apply it in Praxis and Theory. The "Centre" and "Right" of the globalized world do not even have the foggiest notion what dialectics is all about; hence, they cannot even read and study the writings of the modern authors of Dialectic who, in fact, have just refined the same millennia-old Formal Logic.
C. The Four Noble Truths
All Buddhist schools acknowledge
not one or two, but four fundamental "truths".
However, in contradistinction
to Parmenides, the noble "Way of Truth" seems to be eightfold:
1) that existence is suffering
(dukkha);
2) that this suffering has
a cause (samudaya);
3) that it can be suppressed
(nirodha); and
4) that there is a way (magga)
to accomplish this,
the noble
Eightfold
Path.
That Labour with its fourfold face causes earthly "suffering", this the Buddha did not tell his flock; and certainly, "magga" is not the panacea towards emancipatory transcendence. On the contrary, he described the flow of life as a type of vicious Hegelian dialectical "circle of circles"; he called it: paticca-samuppada; for sure, it's a weird theology that is thoroughly mixed with "re-incarnation" hocus-pocus. Freedom implies the "breaking" of this cycle, only then, the individual would "rest in peace", won't be reborn again, and at last, all misery and poverty, all "suffering" will then cease forever.
As far as "truth" is concerned, for the Buddha, all this is simply "common sense", is samvrti-satya ; everybody knows it. Truth is based on the common understanding of the masses, of the men in the street, of the people, of ordinary people. However, for the "chosen few", for the upper castes, there is a "higher" truth, the ultimate truth, paramartha-satya; it is something like Plato's Idea of the Idea, or Hegel's Absolute Idea. it's independent of verbal or logical expression, of substantiality, it's pure, perfect Spirit, Truth In And For Itself.
It is "Nirvana"; this ultimate truth is that of sunyata, expressed in Ancient Greek terms, of universal emptiness, of chaos, of nyx, simply a gaping abyss, modernized, we would say, an eternal "black hole", anenergy. We're back to the fourfold or eightfold One, to Square One, to the One and Only, to the Hen Kai Pan. This is Buddhist Mathematics, Logic & Truth that coincide perfectly and purely with Western Philosophy and Theology. Moreover, the greatest derangement of it all, this nihilistic, empty Truth can only be accomplished, be known, by intuition. Well, well, here we have an important ancient link to modern intuitive philosophy, but also to us. Beware Of The Cynic Dog! Beware Of the Truth of the Intuitive One! Beware Of Its Truth Commissions!
D. Modern Forms of Intuitionism
Finally, let's look at "intuition"
to see whether it is an effective, efficient instrument to acquire knowledge
and truth. The modern intuitionists claim that it has the power to obtain
knowledge or to reveal truths, which cannot be gained by thought, reason
or experience, also not by inference and observation. Of course, if this
should be true, then for us, as original, independent
source of knowledge, to "verify" our postulates and axioms,
it would certainly be an invaluable method to realize emancipatory excellence.
Our postulates, Cosmos, Einai and Nothing, and their respective "axioms",
for example, Nature, Society and History, are emancipatory truisms;
consequently,
they are "self-evident", cosmic-ontic results of "Do
and Think and Excel All Of, By and For Ourselves, Here, Now and Forever!",
hence, they may be taken as a distinguishing mark of logical, truthful
intuition.
Of course, there were early intuitionists, like Richard Price or David Hume, who had preached that moral knowledge can be acquired by means of an immediate apprehension of the truth. Basically, all of them only differed on the nature of "moral truths"; for example, George Edward Moore, the ethical intuitionist, argued that in spite of moral restrictions, things like "pleasures of friendship" and "enjoyment of beauty" are valuable truthful assets.
Why Moore did not become world renowned, and why his colleagues criticized him heavily, was because of his so-called "naturalistic fallacy"; in other words, he tried to place properties like "beauty", the "good" or even the "truth" in a cosmic-ontic context. Somehow, like us, he attempted to prove that "good" is a natural quality, a cosmic property.
Towards the first third of the 20th century, intuition fell victim to Logical Positivism (Ludwig Wittgenstein) that begun to flourish in Austria; and in 1936, A. J. Ayer imported it into Britain with the publication of his Manifesto "Language, Truth and Logic". According to these Positivists, all "true" statements are "logical truths" and "statements of fact"; however, moral or ethical judgements, concerning "good" or "bad", do not fall in these categories, therefore, they cannot be "true", cannot be classified as "logical truths"; only mathematical truths are the perfect examples of "truths" per se. Later even these were challenged, and the "poor" bourgeois intuitionists lost their last haven of rest.
Anyhow, we'll not waste our time with such "truths". Our Subjective exists in the sense of "Seek Ye the Truth, and the Truth shall Emancipate Thee!"
Passionately, let's leave this horrendous labour trauma
behind us, let's transcend
with Active Beauty and in Thoughtful Truth, towards
new, original, authentic Cosmic Loveability, Ontic Lovingness, Historic
Loving and Emancipatory Loveliness:
"Come
live with me, and be my Love,
.....
There will we sit
upon the rocks
And see the shepherds
feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers,
to whose falls
Melodious birds sing
madrigals.
There will I make thee
beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant
posies,
A cap of flowers, and
a kirtle
Embroider'd all with
leaves of myrtle."
(Christopher Marlowe)
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