Truth? Who cares?

Jules van Schaijik | Oct 8, 2010 | 4 cmts

An article in the latest American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly (sorry, no link) reminds me of the inspiring story of Jacques and Raïssa Maritain’s encounter with Henri Bergson.

The Maritains, though earnestly looking for ultimate truth and meaning in their lives, had been deeply discouraged by their teachers at the Sorbonne in Paris, all of whom were enthralled by the scientific and atheistic materialism in vogue at the time. These teachers taught them that the truth they were looking for—i.e. absolute truth, truth that goes beyond natural science, truth that is worth living (and dying) for—that such truth did not exist, or, at any rate, was impossible to find.

Raïssa describes the crushing effect on Jacques and herself:

Already I had come to believe myself an atheist; I no longer put up any defence against atheism, in the end persuaded, or rather devastated, as I was by so many arguments given out as ‘scientific.’ And the absence of God unpeopled the universe. If we must also give up the hope of finding any meaning whatever for the word truth, for the distinction of good from evil, of just from unjust, it is no longer possible to live humanly. I wanted no part in such a comedy. I would have accepted a sad life, but not one that was absurd. Jacques had for a long time thought that it was still worthwhile to fight for the poor, against the slavery of the ‘proletariat.’ And his own natural generosity had given him strength. But now his despair was as great as my own.

And so the Maritains came to a decision: if the world was truly meaningless and absurd, the only rational response would be to commit suicide. They would leave the world together, “by a free act,” and at a time of their choosing.

Thank God, it never came to this. Before the time they had given themselves ran out, they met Henri Bergson. Again Raïssa recounts their experience:

there was always present within us this invincible idea of truth, this door ajar on the road of life; but until the unforgettable day when we heard Bergson, this idea of truth, this hope of unsuspected discoveries had been implicitly and explicitly frustrated by all those from whom we hoped to gain some light. … [Then] by means of a wonderfully penetrating critique … [Bergson] dispelled the anti-metaphysical prejudices of pseudo-scientific positivism and recalled to the spirit its real functions and essential liberty.

What is inspiring about this story is how serious the Maritain’s were about truth. They realized much more deeply than most of us ever do how crucial it is for living a truly human and dignified life. In contrast, what is so depressing about much of today’s culture is the fact that the impossibility of reaching absolute truth is accepted as a matter of course; as if it isn’t really a big deal. “Truth? No truth? Who really cares? It’s for the academics to fight about.”

Comments (4)

Josef Seifert

Oct 8, 2010 9:57pm

Dear Jules,

Your text on and by the Maritains is just wonderful. The young Maritains must have had a very similar experience to the one Friedrich Nietzsche describes so forcefully in the third Untimely Meditations; this is a work which overtly deals with Schopenhauer but, as we know from later letters and works of Nietzsche, really recounts Nietzsche’s own experience. There Nietzsche expresses his conviction that every philosopher who takes his starting point from Kant will fall into a scepticism which ‘corrodes and smashes everything.’ Nietzsche expresses his own feelings in the moving words of the famous German poet Heinrich von Kleist who wrote in a letter that, after having studied Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, he felt his deepest aspirations and search for meaning had been frustrated, the ‘most sacred inner sanctuary of his soul had been deadly wounded,’ and ‘the highest and only goal of his life bad sunk.’ The goal referred to by Kleist was his hope to come to know a truth which was not relative to human consciousness and opinion, a truth ‘which remains true until after the grave.’

Oct 8, 2010 11:54pm

Here is the text of Nietzsche and Kleist from Nietzsches 3rd Untimely Meditation on Schopenhauer as Educator, a work in which Nietzsche’s fight against truth is obvious but in which he makes the astonishing comments of which your Maritain and truth piece reminded me:

This was the first danger in whose shadow Schopenhauer grew up: isolation. The second was despair of the truth. This danger attends every thinker who sets out from the Kantian philosophy, provided he is a vigorous and whole man in suffering and desire and not a mere clattering thought- and calculating-machine. Now we all know very well the shameful implications of this presupposition; it seems to me, indeed, that Kant has had a living and life-transforming influence on only a very few men. One can read everywhere, I know, that since this quiet scholar produced his work a revolution has taken place in every domain of the spirit; but I cannot believe it. For I cannot see it in those men who would themselves have to be revolutionized before a revolution could take place in any whole domain whatever. If Kant ever should begin to exercise any wide influence we shall be aware of it in the form of a gnawing and disintegrating skepticism and relativism; and only in the most active and noble spirits who have never been able to exist in a state of doubt would there appear instead that ‚Ä¶ despair of all truth such as Heinrich von Kleist for example experienced it as the effect of the Kantian philosophy. “Not long ago,” he writes in his moving way, “I became acquainted with the Kantian philosophy—and I now have to tell you of a thought I derived from it, which I feel free to do because I have no reason to fear it will shatter you so profoundly and painfully as it has me.—We are unable to decide whether that which we call truth really is truth, or whether it only appears to us to be it. If the latter, then the truth we assemble here is nothing after our death, and all endeavor to acquire a possession which will follow us to the grave is in vain.—If the pointed edge of this thought does not pierce your heart, do not smile at one who feels wounded by it in the deepest and innermost sanctuary of his being. My only and highest goal has sunken and I have no other one left.” [Letter to Wilhelmine von Zenge, Mar. 22, 1801.] When indeed will men feel in this natural Kleistian fashion, when will they again learn to assess the meaning of a philosophy in the “innermost sanctuary” of their soul?

Jules van Schaijik

Oct 9, 2010 2:56pm

Dear Josef,

Thanks so much for this amazing quote from Nietzsche. Unless you beat me to it, which would be great, I’m going to turn it into a separate post soon.

Jules

Oct 9, 2010 8:26pm

that is of course fine. No beating for it. I will also look for a fuller translation of the truly outstanding letter of Kleist on truth being the condition of a life worth living, of which Nietzsche only quotes a part. Unfortunately Kleist’s despair of truth did not end so happily as the Maritains’. He did not encounter a Bergson and committed with his fiancee suicide.