A Transvaluation of Truth: Towards a Double-edged Concept

Dorota CHABRAJSKA

Abstract

The essay explores the significance of the concept of truth in Western culture. The author describes the role of the value of truth in public debate, which, until the modern times, universally accepted the correspondence theory of truth and presupposed the freedom of expression as the fundamental condition for the genuineness and rationality of the discourse. Against this background, the author points out to the existence of a bond between freedom and truth in the human conscience, evident in the decisions taken by all those who—living in a totalitarian reality—gave their lives rather than agreed to question the truth they had recognized. The author then notes that the postwar time brought an erosion of the belief in the importance of truth in public debate. The theory of society proposed by representatives of the Frankfurt School of philosophy, specifically by Herbert Marcuse, rested on the concept of repressive tolerance precluding freedom of speech, in particular to the non-leftist participants in public debate. In recent decades, it has been political correctness which continually serves as the practical tool of introducing Marcuse’s concept of tolerance in practice and which effectively delineates the range of themes allowed to be covered by public debate together with their preferred interpretations. Just as the twentieth-century totalitarianisms created the phenomenon of the dissident, modern day offensive of political correctness and “correct” thinking has resulted, inadvertently, in the rise of the outsider: one who does not wish to see the world through the “mandatory” lens. It is in reference to such individuals, not infrequently called conspiration theorists, that the concept of post-truth has been reinvented. The question remains, though, whether the adjective “post-truth” actually describes the attitudes of such people or should rather be used about the views of the campaigners for “correct” thinking shaped by appeals to emotion and personal belief. The present considerations call for a continuation which would involve a scrutiny of the place of truth in public debate concerning issues such as religion, identity politics, the COVID-19 pandemic, climate alarmism, the so-called green new deal, mass migration, and the roots and the accomplishments of the Western tradition.