Practical Philosophy: Part 1. Normative Truth

#philosophy #metaphilosophy #normativity #truth #practicalphilosophy #values #nietzsche #beyondgoodandevil #introduction #williamjames #plato #parmenid #idealism

The enquiries, on which not only Western science but also philosophy historically has been focused, is ultimately linked to the question of what is truth.

Truth forms the foundation upon which Western rationalistic philosophical systems are structured in order to capture the essence of reality.

The concept of “truth” is above all inviolable in the history of philosophy, but despite this, there are also critical interpretations of the status of this concept, as for example reflected in the following sentences of Nietzsche from “Beyond Evil and Good:”

“We inquired about the value of this will. Granted that we want the truth:

Why not rather untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance?

The problem of the value of truth presented itself before us — or was it we who presented ourselves before the problem?”

We find another example in William James’ philosophy:

“Truth happens to an idea.

It becomes true, is made true by events.
Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication.”

And James's pragmatism states that practical values determine the meaning of theoretical values.

It is of course not difficult to imagine this kind of relationship, although the dominant concept of philosophy claims the opposite.

But what is really creating difficulty is how purely theoretical values, led by rational truth, can exist beyond concrete, practical interests.

How do they appear, and how can we relate to them?

What sense can a purely theoretical value (at least theoretically) have at all?

It turns out that we are faced with the problem of the inaccessibility of the objective world, that Plato points out in his dialogue called “Parmenides”.

Further on in this series we will return to that when we will dig into the unity of onthology, episthemology and ethics in ancient philosophy forming the metaphysical basis for Western idealism.