Was ist Wahrheit?
Editorial preliminary remarks
The first question is: what is the object of our science? The simplest and most intelligible answer to this question is that truth is this object.[1]
This article is my attempt to explain some aspects of this Hegel quotation in my own words.
Since truth is expressed in the form of the concept, as will be shown below, I suggest that you also read my “Concept tutorial” in conjunction with this article.
And since Hegel, later in the passage quoted above, also addresses the skeptics who say that there can be no knowledge of truth[2], you might also want to read my other article, “Ignorance and Skepticism”, to understand this one better and benefit from it most. You can read all three articles in any order, but you will see that the articles are interconnected.
In all three articles I try to convey to you some insights I have found in reading Hegel. Of course, others may arrive at different insights, but I hope you will find them useful nonetheless.
In a certain sense, the articles together also pose a challenge to the concept of “relativism” and “alternative facts.”
This text was first published in installments in my “Hegel Workshop” between 1997 and 2007. It was first translated into English in July 2020, and in the process revised and provided with footnotes. In April 2021 it was translated back into German.
The argument of this text has since been developed into a book: What Is Truth? elaborates what is sketched here — with the examples of the elephant and the detective, with the dispute between coherence and correspondence, and with the chapter on the learned separation of inside and outside. It is available from Reflexivity Press.
The classical theory of truth — the correspondence between theory and object
In the classical theory of truth (the “correspondence theory of truth”[3]), which everyone intuitively favors and which Hegel once called “of the highest value”[4] (even as he criticizes and extends/sublates it), and which the other theories of truth must at least take into account, a proposition is true if it has a “correspondence” “in reality” (“is the case,” as Wittgenstein and logical atomism[5] put it, “adequately reflects” reality, as Lenin, and in his wake classical Marxism-Leninism, put it).
Today — at the endpoint of a long search through the history of philosophy up to our time for an ever more refined and complex concept of truth — the classical theory may appear rather naive to some professional philosophers. Nevertheless, everyone, including professional philosophers, finds it worthwhile in ordinary life, when in doubt whether a UFO has landed outside, whether the light is off, whether the children have brushed their teeth, whether today is Sunday, and so on, simply to go and “check.”
The object (the “object”) is thus, in this respect ( entirely in the sense of the empiricists and materialists — see below), the measure of truth.
How and where is one to make the comparison?
A question that remains, however, is how one can practically carry out this comparison between representations/models “in our head,” on the one hand, and “reality” (“outside our head”), on the other. Comparing presupposes that there is a common basis on which a comparison can take place. Apart from the specific problems that sometimes arise in individual cases:
Does the comparison take place inside or outside our head/mind? Or at a third location? In any case, the question arises how the separated “inside” and “outside” can be brought together for comparison (and compared, which presupposes a common basis).
To sidestep these problems, some modern theories apply only formal criteria that no longer require this comparison, such as the “coherence theory of truth”[6], according to which all that matters is that the theory not contradict itself.
Resolution
These various questions can be resolved by making clear that the comparison (between the outer world — mediated by sense impressions — and the inner world; Hegel’s theory of the theoretical spirit gives an account of the complexity of the processes involved) takes place in our head (more precisely: in our mind) (and from this the difference between inner and outer world can be derived — this difference is thus not denied).
In this way the concept of correspondence between subject and object actually expands into the “coherence theory of truth,” in the sense that the classical theory is “sublated”[7] within it (for both the experiences of the subject from its senses and lived experiences, its readings, the testimony of witnesses and conversations with others, the results of experiments, and so on must be brought into agreement with the concepts of these subjects (see the “Concept tutorial”).
Hegel’s theory of truth is thus rightly subsumed, in the Wikipedia article, under this “coherence theory of truth.” Incidentally, I can also argue that the various “pragmatic theories of truth”[8] can likewise be subsumed under the “coherence theory of truth,” because the practical experience of fallibility is a sign of “incoherence,” which leads to self-correction (John Dewey[9], for instance, was a former Hegelian, so it is no surprise that his theories are compatible, at least in some parts, with Hegelianism. If my understanding of Hegel here is correct, then Popper is fundamentally wrong when he believes that Hegel holds a theory of truth in which one can systematically prove nothing to be true or false[10]).
Consequence: the logical processing of the many aspects
The task now is not merely to bring object (sense data/measurement data) and subject (model/idea/concept) into agreement, but to process everything that reaches us from outside (simple sense data, measurement data, experiences, reports of others, theories about the object found in books, and so on) together with our own “ingredients” added to it (further inferences, views, feelings, intuition, and so on) into a logically consistent whole.
Put simply: the whole must actually (logically) fit together.
In thinking, in science, and in truth, logic has the task of ordering the given, multilayered material logically in such a way that it becomes a complete whole (this also includes the recognition that information/facts/material may be missing at one point or another, which then remains empty for the time being or — depending on the possibilities — must be sought out further, for instance in the form of experiments or other investigations and research).
These various aspects, points of view, and so on should not simply be glued together like a “collage,” but should be worked into a logically ordered whole.
Incidentally 1: Of course the material can also be arranged differently — the free association of dreams, the stagings of artists, and so on show this. On the one hand, however, the logical connection of the objects is not independent of them, so that if one leaves it out one overlooks something relevant and thus does not have the whole. On the other hand, the stagings of dreamlike and artistic imagination are evidently of a more subjective (rather than objective) nature (that is, they owe more to the subject than to the object) and therefore do not do justice to the objects (and in everyday life everyone expects that by thinking about an object one comes to know it better, does more justice to it).
Incidentally 2: Hegel’s “logic of Being” describes the side of the phenomena (which in turn cannot be left out and, as it turns out, is the basis for the further process); his “logic of Essence” describes the process of “logical digestion.”
Objections: ignorance and skepticism
To the question of whether, beyond the respective human “space of experience,” there is still some other “reality” that is not taken into account and therefore does not agree with human thinking about objects, I have answered at length in “Ignorance and Skepticism”:
First, this difference is merely invented, for if — this being the starting point of this skeptical doubt — it lies beyond human experience (i.e., its cause cannot lie precisely in any human experience), then the question arises how one could know of it at all (how one could make the comparison between what we experience/know about the object and the experience/knowledge of the object that, by definition, we cannot experience/know), which is obviously impossible. This imagined difference therefore obviously has no practical consequence (I can never find myself in the position of discovering that I am wrong) and is also obviously irrelevant as a theoretical thought (since, as a distinguishing feature between a correct and an incorrect theory, it is evidently useless, for the way this fundamental suspicion of deviation is constructed, it can be used equally to criticize anything, no matter how good or bad the thoughts about an object may be).
One may (rightly) have great respect for any “sacred” absolute truth, because one is certain that it is too demanding for our modest, limited human understanding.
(Ironically, such skeptics, while being certain in this way that there can be no such thing as an absolute truth, nevertheless treat at least the “fact”/truth that there is no absolute truth as if it were itself a kind of absolute truth, which represents a kind of self-contradiction. (As Hegel remarked: if one applies one’s doubt to doubt itself, the doubt disappears[11]).
In real life, however, one never simply doubts everything and thereby holds every theory/every concept to be simply unproven and possibly false; rather, one must make decisions, and thus tries at least to find a relative truth that does justice to what one knows and experiences, and conversely tries to avoid errors. That is exactly what we want to do here (and what Hegel, as I understand him, tries to do in his Logic and in his work as such: to try to examine, reflect upon, understand, and explain what we do in our practice).
Instead, the objection resolves itself into taking all aspects into account after all, while being careful to avoid “hasty” answers and remaining open to correcting errors and incorporating extensions (all of which, however, in the final analysis again comes down to taking all aspects into account — “the truth is the whole”).
The true is the whole[12]
In what follows we will now once again consider some of the typical aspects and arguments for pluralism, empiricism, and so on, so that one can test for oneself whether the concept of truth given here indeed captures these appropriately
(for a theory of truth conceived in this way must, of course, aim precisely to sublate the other concepts of truth within itself as well).
Paradox — wonder as the starting point of thinking/learning:
The impetus toward philosophizing (the need no longer simply to take something as unproblematically given, but to think about it) was offered by wonder, says Aristotle[13], and indeed, when something proves problematic, when a paradox/contradiction (for instance, of new phenomena that cannot be explained by existing theories) appears, we feel dissatisfied with this state and strive to have such problems resolved (thus a classic pedagogical motivation employed by teachers is to present something to their students in such a way that they are made aware that they cannot explain it, so that they become conscious of lacking this knowledge and want to explain it, and thereby learn its explanation).
The progress aimed at then naturally consists in seeking a solution that “sublates” the existing knowledge and the new phenomenon requiring explanation, which cannot be explained by what was previously known (and which may even seem to contradict it), into a new explanation on a new level. (The ascent from Newtonian physics to Einsteinian physics is the classic example, but this occurs on a much smaller scale constantly in our daily lives as well.)
Plurality of the senses
It is said that the senses give no certainty, because they can be deceived, but in practice it is usually the case that we receive information from at least one sense about the deception of another sense: we feel that we cannot touch an optical illusion; conversely we see that the felt stimulus on our skin does not originate from what we suppose, but from something else, and so on.
We want to assemble the various, superficially contradictory sense data in our mind into a convincing overall picture.
Witness testimony
Who does not know them — the different witness statements in a crime novel/detective story or in other investigations (“oral history” or also in everyday life, for instance in a quarrel between siblings). The film “Rashomon”[14] became famous for this (or, more recently — and more trivially — “The Red Riding Hood Conspiracy”[15]). Here too, the task is to arrive, from the various, superficially contradictory witness statements, at a satisfying overall picture that explains the differences (where of course one must also take into account here that unconscious or conscious falsification of statements comes into question, since witnesses may have individual reasons here to deviate from the “truth” — each viewed from their own perspective — in their respective accounts. But this too should ultimately be reconstructible within a satisfying overall synthesis, as, for instance, at the conclusion of a classic Agatha Christie detective novel).
Empiricism
In the transition from scholasticism to empiricism (at least as it is remembered today from the perspective of empiricism), it is emphasized that in scholasticism only the authority of scripture (Bible, Aristotle) was relevant, that one did not, at that time, look into “reality” at all (illustration: the alleged refusal of theologians to look through Galileo Galilei’s telescope in order to observe the moons of Jupiter themselves[16]).
Through this dogmatism, contradiction (with a possibly deviating “reality”) is avoided by blanking something out, not looking at all, not checking (and, if deviations occur anyway such that they cannot be ignored/suppressed, then consistently prohibiting them: the Inquisition).
But quite apart from how any religious or political “totalitarianism” or “fundamentalism” deals with “deviant/inconvenient facts”: it simply happens — even, and especially, nowadays, when one wants to look more openly — that something looks good “in theory” (which is then cautiously called a “hypothesis” or “model”), and then, upon checking or on the basis of, by now, improved, finer measurement methods (many differentiations in the more advanced physical theories, for instance, can only be perceived and decided on the basis of refined measurements), one arrives at results that contradict the theory, and these must then be explained and integrated, which can range from simple modifications/extensions all the way to “paradigm shifts.”
(But of course, in the actual practice of science, which is carried out only by fallible human beings, inconvenient facts can also be explained away and ignored — a field, among others, for the sociology of science, which shows the partial justification of the rather pessimistic descriptions, for instance, of Kuhn. Nevertheless, one should at least be able to point out and criticize this unscientific behavior according to the standards named here for a correct scientific procedure).
Skepticism, self-purpose, and models
From this experience the skeptic can derive a reservation against existing explanations:
Even these existing explanations of a thing may later prove inadequate. As a “reminder” or “marker” for this possible later-emerging deviation, we postulate “the thing in itself,” which can likewise deviate from our explanations. Correspondingly, the existing explanations present themselves, from this skeptical perspective, merely as “models” of reality. (In materialism, including its Marxist-Leninist variant, this skeptical reservation, despite all “epistemological optimism,” has been preserved in the distinction between “real” matter and “merely derived” representations in the head.)
If, on the other hand, this standpoint is not taken into account, then no need to check/look will develop at all, and dogmatism will arise instead.
In Hegel, this standpoint of skepticism and criticism is thus important (“second attitude toward objectivity”[17]) and is taken into account/preserved in the process (and in sublation as its result).
Various theories
When theories contradict each other as explanations of “facts”/“states of affairs” (or can each explain the object only partially, without fitting seamlessly together), this is perceived, at least in natural science, as a problem that must be solved: either through falsification of the other theory(ies) and/or through the further development of the theory(ies) into a new theory into which the previous theories in question are integrated (at least in terms of their explanatory content) (with a “paradigm shift”[18] in the case of fundamental extensions, otherwise without one).
Incidentally: just as, ideally, at the end of a successful investigation all witness statements can be explained, including false statements, which, even though not directly taken into account, are explained as false statements, so too, at the end of a synthesis of all theories, not all theories and all material need necessarily be included — some is justifiably left out.
This parallel also works in the reverse direction: just as new witness statements, new evidence can lead to a reassessment of the entire case (which producers of crime/detective stories and courtroom films largely live off of), new results can of course also lead to a reassessment/reordering in which what is regarded as relevant/irrelevant among the existing facts and theories also changes — Thomas Kuhn’s famous “paradigm shift”[19]).
Pluralism — the elephant example
The blind men and the elephant, embodied as the “Blind Men’s Fountain” in the Rheinaue park, Bonn, Germany. Source: Wikimedia
In the Indian tradition (Hinduism is, after all, the pluralistic religion par excellence, and moreover, in Indian society, many other religions are found alongside it — Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Buddhism, and so on), there is the well-known fable of the blind men who are asked to describe an elephant[20]: depending on whether the person in question has hold of the leg, the belly, the tail, the tusk, the ear, the trunk, and so on, of the elephant, an entirely different description of the elephant results (one that, of course, contradicts the others).
It is clear that the lesson to be drawn from the story is supposed to be that each of these descriptions contributes its part to the truth, and that suppressing/forbidding one of these partial truths would not be appropriate, but would instead prevent us from arriving at the adequate and complete picture of an elephant. This, then, is directed against ignoring, suppressing, or forbidding contradictory partial truths.
Prohibition of deviant positions as opposed to the pluralism of different positions
The prohibition, conversely, arose from the partial insight that truth after all must not contradict itself, that there can, after all, be only one truth (in Hegel, this is the position of “the understanding” [Verstand]). A position that has, historically, indeed occurred quite often, but that was rather unpleasant for those who deviated and that has, to that extent, also hindered the search for truth.
Modern leftist critics of “truth” (for instance, in the tradition of the Frankfurt School) and/or postmodernist critics therefore often have this position in mind when they take the field against the totalitarianism of truth or of the claim to truth, and so on.
But both the position of “the single truth” and that of the necessary pluralism as an opposite to “the single truth” each in their own way emphasize only a partial aspect of truth, and to that extent are both only partly right and partly inadequate (and thus both also have negative effects); both must therefore be sublated (as then happens in the following section as well).
Back to the image — the truth of the image of the elephant
The parable of the elephant presented here draws its persuasive power from the fact that the unity of the one elephant is found again in the different descriptions (the parable would, after all, be considerably less convincing if the blind men had each felt and described entirely different things — say, a glass of wine, a handful of sand, the wind, a rose, a piece of chewing gum, a computer, and so on — and possibly even as a description of an elephant).
Correspondingly, the image does not simply stand for pluralism alone, that is, for the good reason for the diversity of experiences, but conversely also for the higher unity of these differences, which are sublated in the true image (concept) of the elephant.
Truth as concept
If, then, you aim at such an all-encompassing, logically ordered truth, you arrive at what Hegel calls the “concept” (in Hegel’s German vocabulary: “Begriff”) and which has its own article (and its own tutorial) devoted to it: see the “Concept tutorial”.
Conversely, if you have followed the concept tutorial and apply it to the “concept” of “truth” itself, you should, in essence, arrive at the conclusions of this article. This is why I said at the outset that these two articles complement one another.
Treatment in Hegel
In principle, of course, Hegel’s entire Logic is to be understood as a treatment of this theme; one can confidently call the question of “what is truth” (and how do we find it) the basic theme of the Logic (the two other basic themes that are also often given for the Logic — “what is thinking and how does it proceed, what is the ‘discursive’ element in thinking” and “what is science and how does it proceed, what is the ‘scientific’ element in thinking” — of course amount to the same question).
Hegel, “Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences,” vol. 1, §19, Addition 1 ↩︎
Three sentences later the quotation continues: “But then it is immediately followed by the question of whether we are also capable of knowing the truth. There seems to be an incongruity between us, limited human beings, and truth that is in and for itself, and the question arises of the bridge between the finite and the infinite. God is the truth; how are we to know him? The virtues of humility and modesty seem to stand in contradiction with such an undertaking. — But one also asks whether truth can be known, in order to find a justification for continuing to live in the meanness of one’s finite ends.” ↩︎
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahrheit#Die_Korrespondenztheorie_der_Wahrheit ↩︎
“Kant, when in the Critique of Pure Reason, [B], p. 83, coming to speak, with reference to logic, of the old and famous question of what truth is, at first grants, as something trivial, the nominal definition that it is the agreement of cognition with its object — a definition that is of great, indeed of the highest, value.” (Hegel, “Science of Logic,” TWA vol. 6, pp. 264-265) ↩︎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth#Coherence (in the German version at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahrheit#Kohärenztheorie, Hegel is not mentioned) ↩︎
The meaning of the word “aufheben” [sublate], which is used several times in this article because it represents an important aspect of Hegel’s concept of truth, can be read about in the article on “Aufheben” and in the article on the English translation “sublation”. ↩︎
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahrheit#Pragmatismus_und_Intersubjektivitätstheorien. ↩︎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey#Pragmatism,_instrumentalism,_consequentialism ↩︎
Popper misunderstands Hegel in this way in his 1945 book “The Open Society and Its Enemies.” The book is criticized, among others, by Kaufmann 1959. ↩︎
“If doubt becomes the object of doubt, if the one who doubts doubts doubt itself, then the doubt disappears.” (“Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion,” quoted according to the TWA-Suhrkamp edition, volume 16, page 122). For entertainment, I have produced a little song from this quotation, which you could download if you wish. ↩︎
This is a famous quotation from Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit.” ↩︎
Aristotle, “Metaphysics” -> “Introduction” -> “Starting point and endpoint of science.” To quote from the German translation: “Whether men are now beginning to philosophize, or did so in ancient times, the impulse for it was offered by wonder, first about the nearest problems at hand, […]”. ↩︎
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_–_Das_Lustwäldchen ↩︎
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Rotkäppchen-Verschwörung ↩︎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair, particularly footnote 7: “Galileo complained that some of the philosophers who opposed his discoveries had refused even to look through a telescope: Galileo did not name the philosophers in question, but Galileo scholars have identified two of them as Cesare Cremonini and Giulio Libri (Drake, 1978, pp.162, 165; Sharratt, 1994, p.87). Claims of similar refusals by bishops and cardinals have been made repeatedly, but there seems to be no evidence to support them.” (Translation Kai Froeb) ↩︎
Hegel, “Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences,” vol. 1, §37ff. ↩︎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant; the German version of the article https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_blinden_Männer_und_der_Elefant is less detailed. ↩︎