Absolute Truth in a Changing World

Abstract

With Jan Woleiiski I share a great admiration for the achievements of Polish philosophers and logicians from Twardowski onwards, and we likewise share a fascination for their personalities, foibles and vicissitudes. More importantly, we both agree that Polish logic and analytical philosophy got the balance about right between philosophy and its history. Other things being equal, it is better—for philosophy—to be a good philosopher who is ignorant of the subject’s history than a good historian with no good sense of what is philosophically important. But other things are not equal, and it is possible to both have a good nose for philosophical importance and plausibility, as well as being sensibly informed of relevant portions of the subject’s history. The reason is not simply that by knowing the history one is able to avoid tumbling into the pitfalls of the past or wasting time reinventing theories that have already been invented. It is also that the historical dimension lends depth to one’s appreciation of the problems themselves, and gives one a sense of the historical element in any current discussion. No one philosophizes in a vacuum and it is folly to suppose otherwise. When the history is relatively recent, as with the history of Polish philosophy from 1895 to 1939, some of the issues are likely still to be with us. One such issue is the philosophy of truth, about which Jan and I collaborated some years ago in a long historical essay! An aspect of it is the subject of this essay.

The fundamental things apply As time goes by —Herman Hupfeld