Truth

Abstract

In Chapter 2 we saw that there is a circularity buried in Bradley’s attempts to argue for the major tenets of his monism. This, of course, does not show that his monism is wrong: merely that it is unproven. And I doubt whether Bradley himself would have been much perturbed by this demonstration. After all, he himself denied that his metaphysics was erected on foundations, so that the status of his own arguments would be questionable even in his own eyes. (We shall see in a later chapter that he is inclined to think that what is persuasive about his metaphysics has nothing to do with anything approaching demonstrative proof.) And to what set of metaphysical views is there not some serious objection? Further, surely ‘not proven’ is a much less serious charge than, say, ‘inconsistent’? What is more important than this about the content of that chapter is that we can begin to see from it that Bradley seems not to be easily identifiable with the comically bizarre figure in the history of English-language philosophy that, as we saw in Chapter 1, was sketched in the writings of Russell, Moore and the logical positivists and became standard through generations of textbooks.

‘He said, “Where have you been?”’

And I said, “I have been out.” This is called a white lie. A white lie is not a lie at all. It is where you tell the truth but you do not tell all of the truth. This means that everything you say is a white lie because when someone says for example, “What do you want to do today?” you say, “I want to do painting with Mrs Peters,” but you don’t say “I want to have my lunch and I want to go to the toilet and I want to go home after school and I want to play with Toby and I want to have my supper and I want to play on my computer and I want to go to bed.”’

Mark Haddon, [The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. London: Jonathan Cape, 2003, p. 62