Our moral duty to seek Truth
Our moral duty to seek Truth
Thought for the day
Those of us who came of age in the sixties in the USA grew up in an environment of epistemological-political-ideological-religious consensus. Even though there were disagreements within that consensus, serious enough to cause arguments, we all took as given that truth transcended such differences. We could not imagine a world in which any responsible person would be speaking “my truth,” based on “lived experiences.”
The first challenge to the consensus was the civil rights movement, with Dr. King its leader. This challenge was not epistemological in character, because it accepted the basic premises of the American republic. It was a question of erroneous laws and customs with respect to race that needed to be rectified. And the nation came to consensus on this point in a period of approximately fifteen years (1954-1969), with new laws and norms.
It was the Vietnam War that provoked a collapse of the epistemological consensus. The war raised the question of the possibility that the nation was violating the moral principles of the Republic through persistent imperialism in its foreign policies. But the nation lacked the capacity to address the question in a responsible and full way, which would have provided a foundation for the emergence of a new epistemological-political-ideological-religious consensus. The political, educational, journalistic, and religious institutions of the nation were not up to the task. The nation settled in to a profound division with various fault lines. Its acceptance of this situation was indicated in the 1980s with the phrase, “one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist.”
In my personal experience, I discovered the depth of the epistemological problem in the early 1970s through a study of black nationalist thought, in which I learned that black scholars possessed a fundamentally different understanding of the modern world from white social scientists. I could not accept the idea that there was a black social science as against a white social science, because this would imply that truth is what those in power say it is. I could not accept that questions of truth would be resolved in the terrain of power.
I worked through the question through a study of the Catholic philosopher Bernard Lonergan, through which I arrived at the conclusion and conviction that questions of truth can be resolved through a persistent commitment to “cross-horizon encounter,” in which one listens to persons of other horizons and cultures, taking seriously their points of view, and seriously reflecting on the questions that are raised in the encounter. A condition for the attainment of truth, as Lonergan had made clear, was a commitment to the attainment of understanding as the highest desire. A price would be paid for such commitment, which Lonergan did not mention and which I naively did not know, but which I would subsequently learn in experience.
In subsequent years of encounter with the Third World—the phrase remains valid, in my view—I have learned that the peoples who comprise the great majority of humanity possess an epistemological understanding similar to the one to which I had arrived. In the first place, the peoples of the Third World take as given that there is truth, not merely your truth or my truth. They believe that every child has the right to a school; and that every nation, large and small, has the right to be sovereign; to name just a couple of numerous examples. In the second place, they believe that truth is attained through a “dialogue of civilizations,” in which people from different nations and regions talk with mutual respect about the common concerns of humanity and the issues that humanity confronts. And they have faith in the future of humanity; they believe that the dialogue of civilizations, which has begun among the peoples of the South, will lead to the necessary social changes that will save the world.
Before the woke, before social justice advocates became social justice warriors, we believed in Truth, not my truth as against your truth. In my view, the acceptance of “my truth as against your truth” reflects a profound moral laxity that has extremely negative social consequences.
But there is a way out of the darkness and division: take up the call of the peoples of the Third World for a dialogue of civilizations.
I woke up this morning with my mind trained on Truth.
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