Truth

(1) A particular truth must be relative to context. (why?) Ambiguity of language.

(2) Context exists only in relation to a consciousness.

(3) So truth is not absolute.

(4) The ultimate being is simultaneously prior to and beyond abstractions.

(5) So Truth is neither absolute nor relative, just simply beyond the this-and-that of linguistic representation.

(6) Intentional schemata are unable to adequately encapsulate being-as-it-is.

(7) Once again, the truth of an ontology is relative to the consciousness which utilizes it.

(8) In ethics, truth is both relative and absolute, since we balance the interests/value systems of the individual against and with the collective.

(9) Ethics--or, viewed from an alternate perspective, Action--is a resolution of the linguistic disjunction, since it is both thought and action and since we are concerned with both the absolute and the particular.

(10) To lead a just or a good life--- to seek truth--- to be happy--- what lasting, eternal value can these obtain given that those who dream these existences are themselves mortal? Such goals mean nothing in-themselves, but for the person who actively believes them, they can have whatever meaning he or she chooses.

(11) Truth is therefore a choice. (Is being a choice?)

(12) Truth never lasts-- that is, the universe constantly changes. So the only thing that stays the same absolutely is impermanence.

(13) Being is a unified infinity-- not the resolution of all paradoxes, but the process by which this resolution is endlessly unfolding. Existence is not a fleeting, static, external conglomeration of appearances-- but the process of being by which everything at last becomes itself.


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Truth is a metaphor, an argument from vapor. We seek it at all times and in all places; yet, we do not always act as the truth within us directs us. This voluntary separation is free will, and by this separation we are conscious. Consciousness cannot be dissected apart from this separation-from-being which accompanies the notion of truth. Yet as consciousness, as a reflection of a separation, we seek the truth of ourselves apart from everything else. When we introspect, we reflect ourselves upon ourselves--an infinite series of mirrors repeating the same image eternally. What is the scene these mirrors reflect? A singular, vast emptiness, a hole in space--the profound isolation and alienation of the individual. Then by an unlikely infinite extension of this nothing, we arrive at the doubt at the core of everything--and this, what we have reached after so much doubt, so much tribulation, this must be what we are searching for, tha holy grail of the philosophers--truth! Yet by claiming what we have found at the center of the universe is truth already escapes the restrictions of our methodology, explodes the boundaries of rational exploration. The full scope of our realizations breaches the grid within which we hoped to place our truth, analyze it, dissect it--direct it's unfaltering light into the deepest recesses of mystery and thereby place everything at last into its absolute position. This universality, this immediate presence belies the truth of Truth--that being is not a static, inanimate object to be studied, but the entirety of our experience, of our reality. Separation from this reality enables truth, so truth is ultimately only a reflection of this separation. Truth is the conceptual refraction of Being. By reflecting that which is (and so occupying a peculiar position where what it is, is what it is not,) by existing only in this abstract, indirect fashion, we see truth finally as a paradox. If truth were merely absolute being, if truth represented only the facticity of the universe, it would cease its transcendence, it's imperviousness to doubt. Truth is what is--yet consciousness is what it's not, and is not what it is. Consciousness represents a rupture in the absolution of truth-- faith, the movement of infinity, recaptures only an assurance that the particular contains the universal in some unspecified way. The absolute freedom which characterizes our condition must be contrasted with our entanglement, our interdependence, upon everything else that exists. This duality is the essential dualism of humanity-- the source of our fear and our hope, of our wickedness and our purity, of love and hate--and simultaneously is the eruption of dichotomies entirely, the resolution of the paradox, the end of mystery. Let us recall again the essential paradox, the crux of the human condition: how to act? Caught in the tethers of our multifarious existence, with all the angst and richness of human drama, what do we do next?