Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Julian Baggini - A Short History Of Truth (Quercus, 2017) ***


Julian Baggini is the founding editor of The Philosophers' Magazine. He has a PhD on the philosophy of personal identity and is the author, co-author or editor of over twenty books.

In "A Short History Of Truth", he touches in a very light and welcoming style the different types of truth that exist out there, including the truths that are claimed to be eternal, authoritative, esoteric, reasoned, empirical, creative, relative, powerful, moral or holistic. He explains all of them with their inherent challenges and paradoxes, the way they have been used and abused. All this in about 100 pages of easy to read philosophy. 

Getting to know the truth is a question of attitude. "Establishing the truth requires epistemic virtues like modesty, scepticism, openness to other perspectives, a spirit of collective enquiry, a readiness to confront power, a desire to create better truths, a willingness to let our morals be guided by the facts". 

It sounds so simple, this question of attitude. If it is so simple, why is it so difficult?

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