In this essay, Harry Frankfurt, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University, asks why we should think truth is important.  The bulk of his answer is that it is important because it is useful.  He also suggests that lying can be harmful to our sanity.  The essay is divided into nine sections, plus an introduction.  The structure of the essay is not so much a linear argument as a series of reflections or thoughts that have occurred to Frankfurt on the topic.  Having had the good fortune to take a graduate seminar with Frankfurt in the early 1990s, it is easy for me to imagine him speaking these thoughts; he pursues the issue with intellectual curiosity, without any reliance on philosophical jargon, and approaches the issue with a healthy dose of common sense.  He is not dogmatic, but he is also not particularly interested in investigating ideas with which he has little sympathy. 

The arguments here will be familiar not only to philosophers but also to most of those who have thought at all about truth.  For example, he argues that it makes no sense for people to deny the distinction between truth and falsity, because they will be embarrassed by the question whether they truly believe what they are saying.  He allows a more sophisticated version of the suspicion of truth, in considering those who deny the possibility of objective truth, or say that truth is always subjective or skewed.  Frankfurt says that such a view cannot be right because we are able to build bridges and construct things with great reliability.  He claims that this ability shows that we are able to find objective truths that are not dependent on subjective points of view or political pressures. 

This sort of objection does dispense with some more crass forms of subjectivism or postmodernism.  It is far from clear, however, that it dispenses with all views that assert that there is inevitable subjectivity in our understanding of the world.  One need only think of Immanuel Kant's philosophy, which is largely about the universal rules that govern the phenomenal world, to see that Frankfurt's argument only goes so far.  Reflection on this makes it less clear exactly what view Frankfurt is arguing against: does he really mean to say that Kant's view about the nature of objective reality and facts can be refuted by our ability to build bridges?  That seems highly unlikely.  Or is he really only arguing against the absurd view that there is no truth and there are no facts?  Or is his opponent the person who simply says that we should not care about truth?  Frankfurt is not very clear on this.  He is clear that we need truth, but who denies that?

There is a section on Spinoza, who was interested in the importance of truth, and said that we all must love truth.  The details of the argument for this conclusion are a little hard to understand, since Spinoza's view of love was odd: love is just joy accompanied by the idea of the cause of our joy.  So his view of love is that it is an experience, rather than an activity or a process of caring, and so on this view, it would make literal sense for us to say "I love my car," or "I love strawberries."  Spinoza claims further, with Frankfurt's approval, that we must love truth because the truth is essential to our lives.  Here the argument goes quickly, and it is not so clear whether the claim is that we must love the abstract entity, "Truth," or whether the claim is that we must simply love all facts.  Either way, the claim seems pretty odd.  When has anyone declared love for the abstract entity of truth?  And are there not many facts that we hate?  As with so many of Frankfurt's claims, there seems to be an interesting idea floating around, but it is hard to pin down.

Frankfurt turns to the question of what is bad about lying.  He considers and rejects the suggestion he finds in Kant and Montaigne that lying brings about the destruction of society, saying that this is an exaggeration.  But then he gives his own account of the wrong of lying, which turns out to be equally implausible.  He says that lying is an attempt to make people crazy, i.e., to damage their grasp of reality.  He also says that, following Adrienne Rich, that lying makes the liar lonely.  Both these claims are obviously false.  First, lying is rarely an attempt to make someone else crazy: it can be an attempt to protect people from reality, and to hide unpleasant or unpleasing truths from them.  When a student lies to me that he could not write his paper because he had to attend a funeral, he is not trying to drive me crazy; he simply wants to make his life easier.  Furthermore, he need not be lonely about it: he can tell his friends about his lie, and they can all laugh about it, making it an occasion for bonding.  Of course, Frankfurt is right that lying can destroy the intimacy of friendship, but when he says that discovering that a friend has lied to us we feel a little crazy, he must be talking about himself.  We might be annoyed and we might feel betrayed if it is lie about something important, but the idea that lying can cause madness seems a strange one.  Maybe lying can cause the end of friendship, but it hardly leads to insanity.  Frankfurt ends this section by saying that if our close friends lie to us, then we start to wonder about our ability to tell who is telling the truth.  Maybe so.   But maybe we would just come to realize that people are weak.  Frankfurt's claim that he has isolated the injury of lying through this discussion is not well defended, and does not make much sense.

Curiously, Frankfurt goes on in the following section to discuss a sort of case where we welcome lying between lovers.  But these lies are not attempts to deceive, since both lovers know that they are lying; indeed, we might just see the untruths as flattery.  Presumably this is why this section does not contradict the previous section's claim that lying is injurious.

The book ends with a very brief discussion of the idea that truth is not just useful, but may be good for more fundamental reasons.  Frankfurt's claim here is truth enables us to come to recognize that we are separate from the world, and thus that we are distinct from others.  Since this section is so brief, (8 small pages of big print), it is hard to see how the argument goes — we mainly see lots of hand-waving. 

On Truth lacks the charm of Frankfurt's previous bestseller, On Bullshit.  The topic is broader, and Frankfurt's argument is less convincing.  There are plenty of suggestive and intriguing ideas  here but one finishes the book with the feeling not that his claims about truth are right, but that that they cold be worth exploring.   

© 2007 Christian Perring. All rights reserved.

Christian Perring, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Dowling College, Long Island. He is also editor of Metapsychology Online Reviews.  His main research is on philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: Philosophical