o/~ Why do I find it hard to write the next line? Oh I want the truth to be said o/~


2004 11 25    |    etc    no date    2024 +    2025    entries    home

Relative thinking: The death of Jacques Derrida prompted a flood of barbed jokes and criticism of the so-called "anything goes" branch of philosophical thought with which he was most closely identified. What is it about relativism that gets us so hot under the collar?

The New York Times accused Derrida and his theory of relativism (the idea that what is true depends on who you are) of "robbing texts - whether literature, history or philosophy - of truthfulness".


When it comes to a work of literature, all we have, 99.99% of the time, are our own interpretations. We are not the author, and even with an author's stated view, we still cannot know the mind of another human being - we cannot know all the "facts" of why the author wrote what they did, or what was meant by any combination of words. We fill in the gaps from our own experiences, our own knowledge, filters of others' interpretations, and what we end up with is our own interpretation of the work. Regardless of whether what we come out with is the "truth" intended by the author, it is still a "truth" to us.

We can gain an insight, an enlightenment, an inspiration, a gain, from something, that may not have been there overtly or intentionally. Do I, for example, understand all the intricacies and nuances of Buddhism and Taoism? No. Do I gain, still, benefit from what I do read of either? Yes.

There is, of course, the chance that the truth you come up with may be erroneous, misjudged, miscalculated, but nothing is perfect except perfect in its conceptual form. Does this imperfect interpretation rob your discovered truth of value? I don't think so, not if it's revealing something to you, either good or ill. So, while there may be some truth-theft going on somewhere, has the work not done its job if it has, however convolutedly, revealed something to you?

My truth is that it is impossible, in some contexts, for us to do anything but interpret through our own personal filters; that it is, in fact, quite impossible for us to get the desired value from whatever it is we're reading, specifically because we aren't the person who created it, and also because each of us is going to see any given thing in a different way. Whatever truth may have been intended, is not going to hit home to anyone in exactly the same way. It can't.

What is true: The sky is blue to sight. What is also true: Even though we all (for the most part) see the same blue, we don't all think of that blue in the same way. To some it's sky blue, to some it's cerulean, to some it's cornflower, to some it's baby blue, to some it's robin's egg blue, and there are millions of other blues it could be - as many, perhaps, as there are beings on this planet with sight enough to view the sky. Does that rob the sky of the truth of blue?

Does my re-write of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism 1 rob them of their value? Perhaps of the truth of them, but not a truth of them.

When it comes to history, it's anybody's guess a good deal of the time. The only way to know the truth of the past, is to have been there. We can only know the past through the interpreted truth of other people; so are they robbing history of its truth? If they are, how can we be accused of doing that, and being wrong in doing it?

So, what it all boils down to, is that it depends on your interpretation of truth itself - on what truth is, and on your interpretation of presented factual truth. The debate extends in many ways:

  • We have the habit, for example, of interpreting truth as infallible - that truth is perfect, always right, never wrong; that truth is, by its very nature, right. Can there be "wrong" truth?
  • There are some views that are blatantly wrong, even after all "facts" are introduced. Is that still truth?
  • Is there a difference between "truth" and "truthfulness"?
  • Does objectivity exist in any but a conceptual form?


Truth is thought of in a "hard" way; that is, it is unbending. Once it is truth, it stays truth. It cannot be altered, shaped, changed. Truthfulness, on the other hand, is thought of in a "soft" way. There is the human behaviour trait of truthfulness, which is the degree of honesty, and that can be changed, altered, seen by degrees; but there is also truthfulness as a general concept - the level of truthfulness of, for example, the account of any event. As I said above, those are themselves interpretations. If we are wrong to interpret by who we are, then so are those who have done the interpreting that we are now interpreting, because they, too, have interpreted by who they are. They can't help it. They're human.

Several paragraphs of bullshit later...

I'll stop there.

And I thought I was just going to write a paragraph or two and dance all over the the stupidity of the Times claim. You see where philosophy can get you?



1. Shit happens.
You will feel something about the shit.
It is your choice how you react to, and because of, the shit.
No shit, good or bad, lasts forever.

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