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11 J. Value Inquiry 1 (1977)

handle is hein.journals/jrnlvi11 and id is 1 raw text is: TRUTH AND PHILOSOPHY KENNETH DORTER The history of philosophy has been called such things as the graveyard, and crumbling ruins, of refuted systems. This should be of profound concern to us if only because we ourselves are always historical and inexorably incorporated into the history of philosophy, where, whether we call our philosophies systems or only positions, the same fate awaits us. We every- where see the process accomplishing itself in the present as it did in the past. The traditions of two of the most influential philosophers of our time, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, have little but contempt for each other, and strong disagreement existed even between these thinkers and their equally eminent teachers, such as Husserl and Russell. So each of them already stands refuted in the eyes of most of his contemporaries, with no lack of arguments to demonstrate his shortcomings. As new philosophical positions come into the fore and the relative number of adherents to the present ones wanes, they will be considered as fully refuted as their predecessors. Thus only a naive optimism can laugh at the presumptions of the past without feeling the ironic sting of its own laughter. The problem is both real and serious, manifesting itself in a circle as old as philosophy. When once we take philosophy seriously we thereby take se- riously the possibility of the disclosure of truth; and the affirmation of truth, to be meaningful, must reject the denial of what it affirms. As philosophers, we therefore inevitably reject, on the basis of our disclosure of truth, the philosophies that disagree with us, as they, in turn, reject ours. It soon becomes evident that philosophers of equal intelligence, sincerity, and good will mutually reject one another's positions, which renders suspect the claim of any of them to truth. Thus our seriousness about truth and philosophy soon overcomes itself into its own negation: skepticism and mistrust of truth and philosophy. But skepticism is no more stable than conviction, for it itself becomes a conviction and assertion. A skeptic like Hume turns his skepticism into a philosophical doctrine while at the same time apologizing for this inconsistency, and the denier of truth insists on the truth of his denial (an irony by no means as innocuous and inessential as he would like to believe). We look in vain for this circle to overcome itself in a dialectical elevation to a higher standpoint. Rather, it has been present since the Sophistic skepticism that accompanied the dawn of philosophy, and it is with us still. It is the inevitable consequence of the tension between the universality of human nature, which encourages us to believe that we all ought to be able to agree, and the multifarious variations among individuals, which render this ought incapable of accomplishment. We may accordingly' decide either I

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