What is Truth?
My state of mind |
My state of mind |
In light of the entry below (“Mass Confusion,” Oct. 19, 2002), some further literary reflections seem called for. Since this is, after all, a personal journal, allow me some personal details…
Yesterday I picked up some packages, delivered earlier, that included four books I had ordered. I opened these packages this morning before writing the entry below; their contents may indicate my frame of mind when I later read this morning’s New York Times story that prompted my remarks. The books are, in the order I encountered them as I opened packages,
- Prince Ombra, by Roderick MacLeish (1982, reprinted in August 2002 as a Tom Doherty Associates Starscape paperback)
- Truth, edited by Simon Blackburn and Keith Simmons, from the Oxford Readings in Philosophy series (Oxford University Press, 1999, reprinted as a paperback, 2000)
- The Savage and Beautiful Country, by Alan McGlashan (1967, reprinted in a revised and expanded edition in 1988 as a Daimon Verlag paperback)
- Abstract Harmonic Analysis, by Lynn H. Loomis (Van Nostrand, 1953… a used copy)
Taken as a whole, this quartet of books supplies a rather powerful answer to the catechism question of Pontius Pilate, “What is truth?”…
The answer, which I pray will some day be delivered at heaven’s gate to all who have lied in the name of religion, is, in Jack Nicholson’s classic words,
You can’t handle the truth!
“Goodbye,” said the fox. “Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes…. It’s the time that you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important…. People have forgotten this truth,” the fox said, “But you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible for what you’ve tamed. You’re responsible for your rose…”
Simple things. Silly books?
What I’m reading … on my way to truth that I Can handle.
Comment by oOMisfitOo — Saturday, October 19, 2002 @ 1:30 pm
(it was the whole Prince synchronicity … I couldn’t believe my eyes …)
Comment by oOMisfitOo — Saturday, October 19, 2002 @ 1:32 pm