Patchwork Essay on Truth

[existential_james]

(The following is composed entirely of quotes, epigrams, and aphorisms from various philosophers...and clowns. Can you tell which is which? )

 

What is truth?

 

The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. To say of what is, that it is, or of what is not, that it is not, is true. You see, truth is the cry of all, but the game of the few. There is no one track of light on the surface of nature - every eye looking on finds its own. Therefore truth is always strange - stranger than fiction. If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things. Then, once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. And you will know the truth and be set free. Truth will triumph. It always does, doesn't it?

 

However, I figure truth is a variable, so we're right back where we started from. Maybe if we tell the truth about the past, we can tell the truth about the present. But who dares to say that he alone has found the truth? Truth is a very difficult concept; multi-faceted. The "general welfare" is not the sphere of truth; for truth demands to be declared even if it is ugly and unethical. But it is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak. What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms. In short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, which after long usage seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. The sun needs no inscription to distinguish him from darkness.

 

What is truth? (Pilate jested, but would not stay for an answer.) The truth is the truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution. Pure truth no one man has seen, nor ever shall know. Thus it takes two to speak the truth - one to speak, and another to hear. But beware, there are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened. When truth cannot make itself known in words, it will make itself known in deeds. All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

 

To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And, at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between, plus some things I can't remember, rolled up into one big 'thing.' There is some fiction in your truth, and some truth in your fiction. To know the truth, you must risk everything. Lies, however numerous, will be caught by truth when it rises up. The voice of truth is easily known.

 

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. Believing something that is not truth is a waste of time. Between the truth and the search for truth, I actively choose the latter. That is truth, to me. The quest to abandon illusions about our condition is also a quest to abandon conditions which support illusions. I don't give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it is hell. But even that echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile suffering.

 

After all, the belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil in the world. When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow. Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies. Sometimes lies are more dependable than the truth. In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. From error to error, one discovers the entire truth. Chase after truth like hell and you'll free yourself, even though you'll never touch its coat-tails. The next best thing suffices: to believe your own thoughts, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men - that is genius.

 

However, whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. To those who would insist that truth is absolute (as if reality stood unveiled before you only, and you yourselves were perhaps the best part of it), mere disagreement suffices to disprove you. We perceive things, not as they are, but as we are. Whistle something but the past and done: treat the other faiths of men gently; it is all they have to believe with. Their minds were created for their own thoughts, not yours or mine. An objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation–process of the most passionate inwardness is the truth, the highest truth attainable for an existing individual.

 

Lastly, there is a line between genius and insanity. Insanity is relative; it depends on who has who locked in what cage. Sanity is only an act; insanity is dropping it. To lie, of course, is to engender insanity. The only difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad. Other than that, there is no difference: all it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. The world of madness is a lot bigger than the world of the sane. So, yes. There is a line between genius and insanity.

 

But I have erased this line. Nothing is true. All is permitted.

 

So take off that mask... and show us all who you really are.

 

Yuav paim quav.

[Blue Sky Turtles]

Just a note - essays shouldn't be opinionated i.e. using first person (I, me,). It's confrontational at the end by pointing the essay towards the audience "show us who you really are". If you are quoting philsophers, you need to recognise the philosophers, thus, avoiding copyright laws.

[existential_james]

Just a note - essays shouldn't be opinionated i.e. using first person (I, me,). It's confrontational at the end by pointing the essay towards the audience "show us who you really are". If you are quoting philsophers, you need to recognise the philosophers, thus, avoiding copyright laws.

 

Most of those people are dead, and in any case, I'm not turning it in for a grade or selling it, so it was really just an exercise of my own creative ability to make a coherent whole out of epigrams of philosophers varying from Aristotle to Nietzsche to Kierkegaard and Camus to such (to use your word) confrontational figures as the Joker...

 

At any rate, when dealing with philosophy I am a very confrontational person. Not necessarily rude, confrontational, but confrontational in that what I say actually means something. It is not just superfluous ego-stroking... there's actually a point behind it. And a creative medium in which to voice it.

 

"Essays shouldn't be opinionated," is a lie, by the way... tell that to every author who ever existed, because... really, that's all that books are. Extended Essays.

[Blue Sky Turtles]

Essays are based on fact not opinion and you need to source your essays for future reference in the last few years of high school, that's why I said it, because I'm used to reading/writing someone once said "blah blah blah". I wrote an essay on Brave New World and Aldous Huxley is dead, but I had to quote his words in order to avoid getting a zero for plagerism. If you look at the back of the books, the authors acknowledge their sources.

[existential_james]

Essays are based on fact not opinion and you need to source your essays for future reference in the last few years of high school, that's why I said it, because I'm used to reading/writing someone once said "blah blah blah". I wrote an essay on Brave New World and Aldous Huxley is dead, but I had to quote his words in order to avoid getting a zero for plagerism. If you look at the back of the books, the authors acknowledge their sources.

 

No.... research essays are based on fact, not opinion. Which is the type of essay they have you do in high school. I think. It's been a few years since I've graduated. An essay is actually the following:

 

es⋅say

   [n. es-ey for 1, 2; es-ey, e-sey for 3–5; v. e-sey]

-noun

1. a short literary composition on a particular theme or subject, usually in prose and generally analytic, speculative, or interpretative.

2. anything resembling such a composition: a picture essay.

3. an effort to perform or accomplish something; attempt.

4. Philately. a design for a proposed stamp differing in any way from the design of the stamp as issued.

5. Obsolete. a tentative effort; trial; assay.

–verb (used with object)

6. to try; attempt.

7. to put to the test; make trial of.

 

Now, if you'll notice in definition #1, one of the descriptions of an essay is the word "interpretative." This word has it's roots in the word "Interpretation," which you may or may not know at this point in your education. An interpretation is something that is, by definition, based upon opinion; and never upon fact. If it IS based upon fact, it is not an 'interpretation,' it is a 'regurgitation." (This is obviously excluding the interpretation of different languages, but that is a colloquial usage whereas the proper term would be 'translate,' and I'm speaking of the Literary use of the word.)

 

Secondly, this is a topic on Philosophy. And if you know anything about Philosophy, you'll know that only those followers of the Objectivism movement (which is really more of a cult, led by Ayn Rand than a philosophy) concern themselves with "facts," at all. Most books written by philosophers are split up into what are called "aphorisms," or.... you guessed it: essays, to get their point across. None of these essays are based in "fact," but merely upon the building of opinions. Disagreeing with Person X's opinion, but agreeing with Person Y's opinion, and then giving their own opinion on why, in the form of numerous essays.

 

This is an opinion essay. And no, that is NOT an oxymoron.

 

Lastly, you mentioned that "authors acknowledge their sources." This is not usually because of copyright laws. The copyright laws on literature do very little, in fact, and really only govern the revenue flow to make sure that money spent on a book goes to the rightful owner. When you see acknowledgements in the back of a book, it is either out of respect for the author's influences, or it is like a sort of "promoting" of others works, in case the reader wants to branch out on that specific topic and read more on it. (This may not make sense to you either, but people DO read outside of school, and people DO study things outside of school.)

 

I even sent a copy of this essay in a .txt file to my English professor at University and he replied with "You Clever Bastard!" So I really don't think you have quite the room to give me a lecture on the proper usage of the term "essay," or to regurgitate your MLA guidelines to make sure that I get a good grade on this essay that I did for... fun.

[Clogz]

All philosophy ends at this road of discovery - we make our own truth.

But, we create philosophy with what we perceive around us, inferring on the nature of the world based on that and the experiences and opinions of others.

Philosophy is based on experiences and opinions - which change from person to person. Therefore, if the truth is an unchanging and constant factor, than philosophy (which is fluid and undefinable) cannot claim to discover anything true - merely an opinion on life.

 

Its a great essay with clever logic. But to take what it is says as truth is dangerous - because philosophy is a blind guide that claims to see.