All lovers of literature are in essence lovers of words. But there can be a complacency in even the most profound readers to negate that words have a history, words have a dynamic meaning. I have always turned to literature to find out what I believe is truthful, what I believe has a higher purpose in understanding human reality. But then I realized that I had not even wondered where the word truth came from, what was its meaning beyond a Google definition. How many English speakers are the same as me? And so I went on a small quest of tracking the movement of such an important word through time. In a world that felt so confusing the mission took on a personal note- how can I ever orientate myself if I don’t understand exactly what vital words mean and how those words came to be? If language shapes so much of my reality can I take language for granted? I came to find a word like truth, a word that I thought was an objective fact, more mutable than I ever considered before. Does this make me cautious? Does this make me want to never speak again?
As a philosophy student I have come to believe that truth is a value with which to aspire to, the definitive goal to be reached in the understanding of reality and all its ingredients. In the beginning it was almost disconcerting to realize how a word with this much weight can transform and develop through time. But then I have come to understand that if we are ever to believe that truth can be accessible there should be a hope that it does correspond to reality- and reality cannot be seen as something constant, monolithic, static. History is indeed proof of this. And so I turn to history in order to understand and imagine other presents, hopefully with this accumulative imagining aiming to better understand how the word truth interacts with our own complicated messy present. It is with this starting point I wish to track its etymology, for the meanings of words can be seen as clues in understanding the people that use them.
Truth comes from the Old English word triewo that means ‘faith, faithfulness, a quality of being true, pledge, covenant’. This has been derived from the German abstract noun treuwitho from the Proto-Germanic treuwaz ‘having or characterized by good faith.’ Treuwaz has the root-deru, which is linked to the idea of wood – “to be firm, solid, steadfast.’ Our understanding of the early definition of truth is based on our understanding of what it means to have solid faith. Do we see faith as an almost blind belief as we have understood it in religious terms? Or do we see faith as having complete confidence and trust in what you happen to know is the truth? I believe that in the time period of the Middle Ages both of these understandings of faith are relevant to how we can understand the first definition of truth. It was indeed a time where there was a great emphasis on the truth of God in terms of what Church doctrine said. The Church had supreme power in that it had the monopoly of the truth- that very few questioned (at least publicly). And so there was indeed a blind belief when it came to what was understood as truth- the truth was the bible, the truth was the church and most followed that truth with a blind belief that, that was the way it was and always will be. Medieval society was also incredibly regimented and hierarchal- there was a belief that there was an order with God at the top, then King and the Pope, then Church and the aristocrats and then bellow the peasantry. Besides a few peasant rebellions this was not completely questioned- it was understood that there was those that fought, those that prayed and those that farmed. For me what was extraordinary was that this blind belief had complete confidence and trust in that society. Fate had put you in that position and that was it. From this definition of truth we can understand that the values and priorities of the time was not in the examination of the truth as we have come to believe in modern terms but rather a confidence in the truth that keeps the status quo. The truth was a faith in what reality was as given, not a wonder of what the truth could be, that it could possibly be different.
It is an interesting thing to note that truth is a noun at this time. It is not a description of something, it is not an action of something, it is something. Around the mid 14th century the understanding of ‘something being true’ was first recorded. Truth wasn’t something, truth was a quality of something. I believe that it is an important thing to be alerted to because it begs the question- what is that something? To have faith is to be in a state of being, truth is then a state of being. But when something is true, it can correspond to something out of your state of being that could be true because something is not necessarily the same as your being in some state of feeling. I believe it’s a shift that shows a beginning to look at the outside reality as a means to understand what the truth.
Truth obtained the meaning of not only being ‘something that is true’ but also needing ‘accuracy and correctness’ in the 1560s. This shift in the definition of truth is directly related to the major upheaval that happened in European societies at the time. The first we have to note is Copernicus and The Scientific Revolution that began in the early 1500s. Copernicus published his incredible paper proclaiming heliocentrism instead of geocentrisim. In the Middle Ages there was an unquestioned faithfulness that the Earth was at the center of the universe and the sun and all the planets revolved around it, despite very complicated mathematics; Copernicus dismantled this, proved that the earth revolved around the sun and made unfathomable mathematics into mathematics that made sense. The brilliance of Copernicus is how he dismantled the blind belief to show a truth that was accurate to what reality presented itself to be. Truth became now not just what one believed but rather what one found out to be an accurate account of reality- only then can one have a confidence in knowing the truth. The Copernican Revolution spurred an intellectual revolution, from Descartes to Newton, great thinkers came to question their reality and what they indeed believed to be true. Truth wasn’t what was given but rather what one worked for. One of my favourite Descartes quotes is that ‘If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.’ Now truth is not associated immediately with faithfulness, it is associated with questioning. Truth now was open up to examination, verifiability but also significantly to a reality that is very much the outside world.
What the Protestant Reformation realized, also in the 1500s, is that the new definition of accuracy and correctness with regards to truth can be contested. Whose truth is more correct? The Catholic Church now was losing its monopoly over the truth. Martin Luther asked the question- why should we believe your church doctrine when your truth is used to further power and church agenda? With the printing press coming into existence- it was about reading religious texts oneself in order to have a closer relationship and understanding of God rather than through the medium of the Church and its ministers. Truth then became part of a wider web of ideology. To believe one’s ideology is to believe that the ideology is true. This led to a battle across Europe not of whose God was better but which way to get access to that God is the more accurate way to the truth of God. Like the Scientific Revolution- what was more truthful became linked to which had the correct process, and that process could be contested. Truth in both cases needs to be obtained rather than given.
Returning to the present I can understand why it would be important to ask me, the writer, why I would be so explicit about taking you through such a historical trajectory. Why is the Medieval Church and the Scientific Revolution have any relevance to how we understand the words we use today? But without looking at history where would we start in our description of what truth means now? Everything seems so muddled, everything so confused. Maybe history can be used as a lens of illumination. Many people say that we live in a post-truth world, politicians flagrantly lie, a radical subjectivism of opinion has allowed for climate change denial. But in our post-truth world there is still competing claims for the truth, everyone seems to be using the word professing that they know what it means with all radically different conceptions of its understanding. And a way to explain it is that we have inherited the whole of the word’s history. In multiple ways we have inherited the two new developments in truth that happened in the 16th century, truth is something to be found out, examined and this begins with questioning, truth should be something that is accurate and not something false and the finding of truth has a definitive process. We also have inherited the idea that the truth can be something that is contested and debated. We can see this definition at play (mostly) in the workings of major institutions such as universities, courts of law, scientific labs. It is the definition that has been told to be the only appropriate understanding of truth. But we haven’t only inherited this tradition of meaning, the meaning we associate with our modern dictionary definitions. Many people cling onto the Old English understanding of truth- that truth is a faithfulness in a truth that is given and unquestioned. Many people have been able to accept truth with blind faith and have complete confidence in its actuality. This conception of truth is the truth that can be easily manipulated, it is the definition of truth not just used by climate change deniers but everyone in some way. No wonder the truth seems so complicated, we have inherited a very complicated sense of the word. Is this why our present is so complicated? Accuracy versus faith, contestation versus acceptance. Is the binary between the two definitions pulling our world apart?
If we have inherited truth’s whole history where does this leave us in our understanding of it? Does its very complications mean that if there is something that is called the truth that truth would be inaccessible due to our inability to create a clear conception of not only what it is but also how to find it? Truth according to any modern definition has to be in accordance with fact or reality. My wonder is whether we are capable of truth in a society whose reality is so fragmented. Are there many little truths, different for each culture, each person, each religion? Or are there big truths that are for humanity? Which is the right way of approaching the truth of reality? What is the something in the first place? Maybe I should follow Descartes in that to be a seeker of the right kind of definition of truth is to doubt all possible definitions. It seems that the world is doing that already- is that a good sign? All the question marks on the page. I wonder if having inherited these two definitions which have amalgamated in a distorted sense of the word is making truth elusive. Should we wipe language clean from its messy history? How would we even do that?
I have had to keep asking what such an uncovering has meant for me, a meaning that constantly evolves into the realm of more and more questioning. With such a complex inheritance should I be using the word at all? Or must I resign myself to the fact that words are complicated beings? I wish I could say that I resolved the questions in my mind and could present them to you all definitively. But with this article my only aim was to show what I found. And I’ll have to admit my aim was also to ask enough questions to make both my mind and your mind spin. My new aim that I have gathered after this process is to treat truth more carefully and so to be cautious with it, treat it as carefully as a Faberge Egg. All this means I cannot give a resolution.
But I still want to offer some sense of reconciliation. Underpinning every single definition is the idea that truth is a quality of being true. For something to be of quality it has to be something that has a sense of excellence about it. Through all the definitions truth has always been something of supreme value, it seems that time and humanity can agree on one thing- truth is something of intrinsic worth. In a world that is becoming apathetic with the lies of politicians, the clinging onto ignorance of others, the falsity sold by those at the top of the ladder its so easy to give up on the truth because it seems that no one really cares about it anymore. But what we see is that most people spend their entire lives clinging very strongly to what they believe is true. Its not just some lofty ideal or definition that academics debate about in university classrooms, it functions in even the minuscule aspects of our everyday lives. And that is why understanding how we use the word is so incredibly important and why we cannot use it in our language carelessly. It’s value is of extreme importance and we know this, but how much are we honoring it? There is hope in deciding to treat it with the honor it deserves. There will always be hope within its value.
I cannot even begin to imagine where the definition of truth will evolve to as time unfolds. All I can say is that I wish to be part of it. So I offer not a definition of truth, I offer no conclusion. What I do offer is what I’ve learned: truth- let me have faith that I can find it and until then let me say ‘I don’t know.’
Bibliography
Google Definition Truth . (n.d.). Retrieved from Google : https://www.google.com/search?q=truth+definition&oq=truth+definition&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.2675j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#dobs=quality%20
Tarnas, R. (1991). The Passion of the Western Mind: Understand the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World . USA: Ballantine Books .
Truth Etymology . (n.d.). Retrieved 2 13, 2019, from Online Etymology Dictionary : https://www.etymonline.com/word/truth#etymonline_v_17903
Chariklia Martalas is a young writer studying Philosophy, Politics, English and History at the University of the Witswaterstrand in Johannesburg South Africa. She has been published in Odd Magazine, The Raw Art Review and the undergraduate literary journal The Foundationalist, among others.