Truth and Truthfulness – An Essay in Genealogy - Softcover

Williams, Bernard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691117918 ISBN 13: 9780691117911

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2004

Synopsis

What does it mean to be truthful? What role does truth play in our lives? What do we lose if we reject truthfulness? No philosopher is better suited to answer these questions than Bernard Williams. Writing with his characteristic combination of passion and elegant simplicity, he explores the value of truth and finds it to be both less and more than we might imagine. Modern culture exhibits two attitudes toward truth: suspicion of being deceived (no one wants to be fooled) and skepticism that objective truth exists at all (no one wants to be naive). This tension between a demand for truthfulness and the doubt that there is any truth to be found is not an abstract paradox. It has political consequences and signals a danger that our intellectual activities, particularly in the humanities, may tear themselves to pieces. Williams's approach, in the tradition of Nietzsche's genealogy, blends philosophy, history, and a fictional account of how the human concern with truth might have arisen. Without denying that we should worry about the contingency of much that we take for granted, he defends truth as an intellectual objective and a cultural value. He identifies two basic virtues of truth, Accuracy and Sincerity, the first of which aims at finding out the truth and the second at telling it. He describes different psychological and social forms that these virtues have taken and asks what ideas can make best sense of them today. Truth and Truthfulness presents a powerful challenge to the fashionable belief that truth has no value, but equally to the traditional faith that its value guarantees itself. Bernard Williams shows us that when we lose a sense of the value of truth, we lose a lot both politically and personally, and may well lose everything.

About this title

Review:

At the heart of Truth and Truthfulness lie a number of questions about truth. What does it mean to be truthful? What role does truth play in our lives? What do we lose if we reject truthfulness? Bernard Williams sets out to answer these questions by identifying two prominent and conflicting currents of ideas in modern thought and culture. On the one hand there is the commitment to truthfulness and on the other there is a pervasive suspicion about truth itself. The suspicion amounts to a questioning of the idea that there is such a thing as truth and, if there is, a doubt as to whether it can be more than subjective or relative.

The commitment to the idea of truthfulness on the other hand relates to what Williams calls "the two basic virtues of truth", which he calls Accuracy and Sincerity: "you do the best you can to acquire true beliefs, and what you say reveals what you believe." The tension between truthfulness and truth is, Williams suggests, expressed in a familiar contrast between two different and opposed ways of doing philosophy. Williams highlights the strengths and weaknesses of both positions while giving his own virtuoso philosophical display during the course of the book.

The real problems for the reader begin with the overall explanatory framework. Having differentiated between "truth" and "truthfulness" and between the two different philosophical outlooks Williams states that his main concern throughout is with what "may summarily be called 'the value of truth'". It is with the introduction of this term that the equivocation--between "truth" understood as a philosophical term (the idea of "truth itself") and "truthfulness" understood as a virtue, or set of virtues--begins.

Williams talks as if "truth itself" and the virtue of truthfulness, while conceptually distinct, are somehow all of a piece. It is one thing to say, with Williams, that we (as individuals and as a society) stand to lose a great deal (and "possibly everything") if the virtues of being truthful were discarded throughout western liberal democracies. But it is quite another to say that to stop talking about "truth itself" would mean the end of liberal democracy. In other words it is difficult to share Williams' conviction that something as big and important as the fate of liberal democracy might depend on the resolution of these philosophical disputes.

For all the impressive display of philosophical expertise Williams' way of mapping the present philosophical terrain is not as useful as he might have hoped and the book as a whole requires a good deal of time and sustained concentration to get through to the end. Try reading Rorty's Truth and Progress alongside Williams' Truth and Truthfulness for illuminating contrast effects. --Larry Brown

Review:

"[Truth and Truthfulness] shows all Williams's characteristic virtues. He is always a pleasure to read, and as it has often done before, his deft, sparkling intelligence newly illuminates an old philosophical subject, scattering light into many surprising corners as it does so. . . . He is consistently amusing, but at absolutely no cost to the depth of the enterprise. And what a wonderful life it would be if even a small proportion of philosophers could write so well."---Simon Blackburn, Times Literary Supplement

"Its virtuoso blend of analytic philosophy, classical scholarship, historical consciousness, and uninhibited curiosity marks Truth and Truthfulness unmistakably as a work by Bernard Williams. He responds to Rousseau and Diderot; Thucydides, Herodotus, and Homer; Nietzsche, Hume, Plato, and Kant; Rorty, Habermas, and Hayden White."---Thomas Nagel, New Republic

"Anyone who wants to understand the relations between the relatively arcane issues concerning truth debated by philosophy professors, and the larger question of what self-image we human beings should have, would do well to read Williams's new book. It is a major work."---Richard Rorty, London Review of Books

"Many colleagues consider Williams the most influential voice in contemporary moral philosophy. . . . [This book] may well have a noteworthy impact. It is Williams' reflection on the moral cost of the intellectual vogue for dispensing with the concept of truth. . . . The patient reader will enjoy the rare experience of watching philosophical and historical scaffolding installed, or revealed, beneath everyday expectations and practices of honesty, trust, doubt, deceit and wishful thinking."---Kenneth Baker, The San Francisco Chronicle

"A model of clarity and discernment."--Library Journal

"[A] brilliant and disturbing book. . . . This is a fascinating and riveting work, and it shows, in a way which no other recent work of philosophy has done, that the subject can be both important and comprehensible--and that is a very considerable achievement indeed."---Alasdair Palmer, Sunday Telegraph

"The book is never dull or nerdy. It is suffused by a sly Oxonian humor and a keen feeling for pleasures and philosophical argument. . . . Yet this playfulness does not detract from its underlying seriousness of purpose: this is a defense of the value of truth against those modern skeptics who deny its existence. . . . [I]t offers the rare pleasure of a first-rate philosophical mind at work."---Edward Skidelsky, New Statesmen

"A new book by Bernard Williams is a big event, and it is not difficult to see why. He writes on important and fundamental issues that are of interest not only to philosophers but also to anyone who wants to understand contemporary culture and society. . . . And above all, he writes with the kind of eloquence, elegance and wit that used to characterize the work of our greatest minds but that has now all but disappeared from academic life. What he writes, people want to read, and what he says, people want to hear."---Ray Monk, Times Higher Education Supplement

"Deftly, and with a certain relish, [Williams] explores the barefaced lying and the many subtler forms of deception and self-deception we practice. . . . The array of arguments he marshals to cast light on the problem leaves little doubt: If you wish to develop your talents, earn the love of another, or pursue justice, then cultivate the virtues of truth."---Peter Berkowitz, Washington Post Book World

"Truth and Truthfulness is the book which has meant the most to me this year. . . . This vigorous, crystalline book is an intellectual landmark."---Richard Sennett, Times Literary Supplement

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0691117918
• ISBN 13: 9780691117911
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344