Truth

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You will know the truth, and
the truth will set you free.

Truth (from Indo-European: *wēr- "trust, faithfulness, assent"; Latin: veritas; Greek: ἀλήθεια Aletheia, from α privativum and λῆθος, P.P.P. from λανθάνω, "conceal", thus literally meaning "that which is unconcealed") is a basic philosophical concept, but one that has been conceived very differently by different thinkers → truth.

„Truth, however, is not something about which one can have opinions. One knows a truth or one does not know it. No one can say that the three angles in the triangle are 725 degrees instead of 180.“ (Lit.:GA 93, p. 108)

What is truth?

Nikolai Nikolajewitsch Ge: What is truth? – Quid est veritas? (1890); Pontius Pilate to Jesus John 18:38.

Sense of truth

„All that we call inventing, discovering in the higher sense, is the significant exercise, activity of an original feeling for truth, which, formed long ago in silence, leads unexpectedly, with lightning speed, to a fruitful knowledge. It is a revelation coursing from its inner source to its outer unfolding manifestation, which makes man sense his likeness to God. It is a synthesis of world and spirit, which gives the most blessed assurance of the eternal harmony of existence.“

– J. W. Goethe:: Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre[1]

The question of Pilate

As long as men could still draw on the old wisdom of the gods, which they had received clairvoyantly, even if only through tradition, they did not need to ask the question of truth. Paul, when he was still Saul, still trusted completely in this old revelation. A last remnant of this attitude - which has meanwhile become insubstantial - still lives in the dogma of papal infallibility for all doctrines of faith and morals proclaimed ex cathedra, which was laid down in 1870. The source of truth here is not man, but an omnipotent God can, according to the claim of this dogma, bring about the infallibility of a man, namely the Pope.

Pilate, when he interrogated the Christ, could no longer be sure of the truth:

„33 Then Pilate went again into the praetorium, and called Jesus, and asked him, Art thou the King of the Jews? 34 Jesus answered, 'Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me? 35 Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Your people and the chief priests have delivered you up to me. What hast thou done? 36 Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now my kingdom is not of this world. 37 Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou therefore a king? Jesus answered, You say it, I am a king. I was born for this purpose and came into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. He that is of the truth heareth my voice. 38 Said Pilate unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and saith unto them: I find no fault in him.“

Through Lucifer, man had been transferred to the earthly-sensual world. Through this he came at the same time more and more into the sphere of influence of Ahriman and fell into error and sin.

„Because man was prematurely transferred to the earthly sphere, because his earthly interests and desires forced him down, things turned out differently from what they would otherwise have been in the middle of the Atlantean era.

As a result, the Ahrimanic spirits, those spirits which can also be called Mephistophelian spirits, mixed themselves into what man was able to see and comprehend. As a result, man fell into error, fell into what one could actually call conscious sin. So from the middle of the Atlantean period onwards, the host of Ahrimanic spirits has acted upon man. What has this host of ahrimanic spirits, so to speak, seduced man into doing? It has seduced him into thinking that what is in his environment is material, that he does not see through this materiality to the true substratum of the material, to the spiritual. If man were to see the spiritual in every stone, in every plant and in every animal, he would never have fallen into error and thus into evil, but man, if only the advancing spirits had worked upon him, would have remained preserved from those illusions to which he must always fall prey if he relies only on the testimony of the sense world.“ (Lit.:GA 107, p. 244ff)

Only after man had learned to make use of his own intellect, which, however, can also be subject to error through the influence of Ahriman, does the question arise again and again, which Pontius Pilate also had to ask: "What is truth?"

„"Among the Hebrew people there were scribes who knew from the Scriptures what had been preserved from the ancient wisdom of the gods. Out of these scribes came the judgment that condemned the Christ Jesus to death. Such a man as Paul, when he was still Saul, looks up to the primeval wisdom of the gods. From it flowed down to the scribes of his time that which this godly wisdom had become for man. Because outstanding men devoted themselves to writing, this wisdom of the gods was maintained and just judgements being pronounced. An innocent man condemned to the death on the Cross: impossible, impossible! if everything took place as it did in the condemnation of the Christ Jesus. Only the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, who was already instinctively involved in a completely different world view, could pronounce the meaningful word: What is truth? - For Paul, when he was still Saul, there was no possibility of even thinking that what took place according to just judgement should not have been truth.

What conviction did Paul have to come to? The conviction that what once came from the gods as truth can be error among men, that men can make it into error, into such strong error that the most blameless goes through the death on the cross.

In order to become quite clear, let us make a schematic drawing of this:

GA 211, S 118
GA 211, S 118

Original godly wisdom, it flows down to the wisdom of the scribes who were the contemporaries of the Mystery of Golgotha within Hebrews (white). There can only be truth in it, Saul had to think. But one had to think another way. Paul, when he was still Saul, said to himself: If this is really the Christ, the Messiah, who has gone through the death on the cross, then there must be error in this current (red). There must be error mixed in with the truth, for it must be error that brought the Christ to the cross; that is, the former Gods' truth must have become error in man.

Of course, Saul could only convince himself by the fact that this was so. Only the Christ Himself could convince him when He appeared to him, as happened through the event at Damascus. But what did that mean for Saul? It meant that the old wisdom of the gods was no longer there, but that the Ahrimanic had flowed into it.

Thus Paul came to realise that the evolution of mankind was seized by an enemy, and that this enemy was the source of error on earth“ (Lit.:GA 211, p. 117ff)

I am the Way and the Truth and the Life

I have seen the HUMAN in his deepest form,
I know the world down to its basic content.

I know that love, love is its deepest meaning,
and that I am there to love more and more.

I spread out my arms as HE did,
I want to embrace the whole world, like HE did.

Hans Holbein the Younger: Christ at Rest, 1519

The answer to Pilate's question is already anticipated by the Christ during the Last Supper in his farewell discourses, as they are handed down in John's Gospel, when he says: "I am the way and the truth and the life". Christ himself is the living truth to which he also prepares the way - and this way leads through the Christ to the Father, i.e. into the innermost centre and the actual source of the highest divine. By permeating himself with the power of Christ in a completely individual way by his own free decision, in the sense of Pauline words "I live, yet now not I, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20), the truth lives in him.

„1 Let not your heart be troubled! Believe in God and believe in me! 2 In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, would I have said unto you, I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that ye may be where I am. 4 And whither I go ye know the way. 5 Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest: how can we know the way? 6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. 7 If ye have known me, ye shall know my Father also. And from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. 8 Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. 9 Jesus saith unto him, How long am I with you, and thou knowest me not, Philip? He who sees me sees the Father! How then do you say, Show us the Father? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself. And the Father that dwelleth in me doeth his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: if not, believe for the works' sake. 12 Verily, verily, I say unto you: He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do: for I go unto the Father. 13 And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 Whatsoever ye shall ask me in my name, that will I do.“

Ecce homo

In the Christ Jesus, the truth became incarnate for the first time and in full. With full justification, therefore, Pilate, when he presents Jesus Christ to the people, scourged, covered in blood, clothed in the purple royal robe and crowned with the crown of thorns, speaks of his Ecce homo (Greek Ἰδοὺ ὁ ἄνθρωπος idoù ho ánthropos "Behold, the man") (John 19:5 ELB).

To know the truth, therefore, is to know Christ! That Christ whose essence is pure love, who gives himself freely and therefore also gives freedom. And wherever a piece of the truth is recognised, the Christ is also recognised.

„When we speak of "truth", we mean a general meaning, namely the fact that we recognise something in the light of the eternal essence. But John says in the prologue: 'This is a mere intermediate thought, which is only conditionally valid. In the last analysis, truth is He, the Logos; and to know in the last analysis means to know the Logos, Christ, and all things in Him.“ (Lit.: Guardini, p. 103f)

And because the Christ is true God and true man at the same time, truth is also divine and human at the same time.

Theories of Truth

In the course of the history of philosophy, various theories of truth have been developed. The following table gives an overview of the most important approaches:

Position Definition of Truth Carrier of Truth Criteria of Truth
Theory of Ontological-metaphysical correspondenc „Veritas est adaequatio intellectus et rei“
Truth is the correspondence of cognizing intellect and thing 		Thinking Things in the world
Dialectical-materialist theory of reflection Agreement between consciousness and objective reality Consciousness (orthodox Marxism)
or
Statement (modern Marxism) 		Praxis[3]
Logical-empirical pictorial theory Conformity of the logical structure of the proposition with that of the facts it depicts Structure of propositions Structure of facts
Semantic theory of truth "x is a true statement if and only if p" (For "p" insert any statement, for "x" insert any proper noun of this statement) Proposition (of the object language) ‘Universe of discourse’ (of the object language)
Redundancy theory ] The concept of truth only being used for stylistic reasons, or to lend emphasis to one's own assertion. Sentences –
Performative theory what one does when one says a statement is true Action / speech act / self-commitment Own behaviour
Coherence theory freedom from contradiction / deriving relations of a statement to the system of accepted statements Statement No contradiction of statement and already accepted statement system
Consensus theory Discursively redeemable claim to validity associated with a constitutive act of speech Statement/proposition[4] Justified consensus under conditions of an ideal speech situation[4]

Truth is a free creative product of the human being

{{Quote|If ye abide in my word, ye are truly my disciples, and shall know the truth; and the truth shall make you free.|John 8:31–32

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.

References

  1. ↑ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Berliner Ausgabe. Kunsttheoretische Schriften und Übersetzungen [Band 17–22], Band 18, Berlin 1960 ff, S. 564 Betrachtungen im Sinne der Wanderer. In: Zeno.org.
  2. ↑ Christian Morgenstern: Wir fanden einen Pfad, Piper, München 1914, S. 52
  3. ↑ Artikel „Wahrheit“. In: Georg Klaus, Manfred Buhr (Hrsg.): Philosophisches Wörterbuch. 11. Aufl., Leipzig 1975.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Jürgen Habermas: Wahrheitstheorien. In: Helmut Fahrenbach (ed.): Wirklichkeit und Reflexion. Walter Schulz zum 60. Geburtstag. Neske, Pfullingen 1973, S. 211–265, hier S. 249: „Nur Aussagen können wahr oder falsch sein.“
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