Truth and Truthfulness
Written by Bernard Williams
Narrated by Ralph Cosham
5/5
()
About this audiobook
What does it mean to be truthful? What role does truth play in our lives? What do we lose if we reject truthfulness? No philosopher is better suited to answer these questions than Bernard Williams. Writing with his characteristic combination of passion and elegant simplicity, he explores the value of truth and finds it to be both less and more than we might imagine.
Modern culture exhibits two attitudes toward truth: suspicion of being deceived (no one wants to be fooled) and skepticism that objective truth exists at all (no one wants to be naive). This tension between a demand for truthfulness and the doubt that there is any truth to be found is not an abstract paradox. It has political consequences and signals a danger that our intellectual activities, particularly in the humanities, may tear themselves to pieces.
Williams's approach, in the tradition of Nietzsche's genealogy, blends philosophy, history, and a fictional account of how the human concern with truth might have arisen. Without denying that we should worry about the contingency of much that we take for granted, he defends truth as an intellectual objective and a cultural value. He identifies two basic virtues of truth, Accuracy and Sincerity, the first of which aims at finding out the truth and the second at telling it. He describes different psychological and social forms that these virtues have taken and asks what ideas can make best sense of them today.
Truth and Truthfulness presents a powerful challenge to the fashionable belief that truth has no value, but equally to the traditional faith that its value guarantees itself. Bernard Williams shows us that when we lose a sense of the value of truth, we lose a lot, both politically and personally, and may well lose everything.
Bernard Williams
Bernard Williams (1929-2003) was one of the most distinguished British philosophers of the twentieth century, White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford University, and Monroe Deutsch Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.
Related to Truth and Truthfulness
Related audiobooks
The Myths We Live By Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vices of the Mind: From the Intellectual to the Political Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Nihilism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Passion for Ignorance: What We Choose Not to Know and Why Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5On Truth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Cynicism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Know-It-All Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Quest for a Moral Compass: A Global History of Ethics Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Liars: Falsehoods and Free Speech in an Age of Deception Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Free Will Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEvil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Paradox Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Enigma of Reason Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kant and the Divine: From Contemplation to the Moral Law Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Philosophy and Real Politics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Function of Reason Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People: How Philosophy Can Save Us from Ourselves Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Idea of the World: A Multi-Disciplinary Argument for the Mental Nature of Reality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Understanding Beliefs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kant and Modern Philosophy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Truth and Truthfulness
7 ratings0 reviews