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Ahmed Hamza Berrada

Truth

Many words in the languages have experienced different meaning and interpretations
through the time. During mankind history a lot of different philosophers had spent their whole
lifetime asking themselves about what the truth really is. The issue of truth is in a manner simple
to state: what truths are, and what (if anything) makes them true. For example, if I say that the
earth turns around the sun, well thats true for everyone. But what exactly lets me know that this
statement is true? People will say we can prove it through science, but science is based on our
senses, and what if our senses were wrong? Well thats exactly Descartess way of thinking. And
like him Nietzsche and many others had their own personal vision of the truth. Theres also the
personal truth, it means that each one of us believes deeply in a truth without any proofs. We can
take the example of religions for that, people strongly believe in God without having any clue
about his existence. So Im going to talk about the link between reality and truth, and expose the
different major visions of the truth so that this word wont be a mystery for us anymore.
If we ask people about truth theyll say that true beliefs portray the world as it is and false beliefs
portray the world as other than it is. And thats the mistake, most of the people think that

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something true is simply something real, but we can prove that this bias is false just by a simple
example. Lets say that were watching the sun, we can definitely say that the sun is real but it
doesnt mean anything to say that the sun is true. So when I say that something is real, it only
means that I admit its existence, and to distinguish the truth needs something more complex. In
our example, its not the sun itself that can be false or true, its our representation or our judgment
towards him. Indeed if I say heres the sun by showing the moon then my sentence is false, but
if instead I say that showing the sun then its true. Having shown the difference between truth
and reality we cant however deny the relation between them. And its the nature of this relation
that created a conflict between the different historical versions of the truth.
Now lets talk about the metaphysical truth. And we cant talk about that without talking
about Descartess brilliant work. For example, lets talk about something obvious for everyone :
life on earth. Its clear the every human being is 100% sure that everything he sees and feels is
reel. But what let us know that all of what we see now is true? People will say that everything
exists because we see it and we trust our senses. But lets imagine the case where our senses are
completely wrong and make us see things that dont exist. And what I just did is exactly what
Descartes called skeptical attacks. And for him an absolute truth is a statement that resists to
skeptical attacks. In that case it gets called principle, and it would be the basis of all the other
facts. For him even absolute mathematical truths like 1+1=2 can be destroyed by skepticism.
Indeed he first though that a metaphysical entity like God was totally controlling us and so that
he was able to make us fells and see what he want us to. Then we could be just in a big dream,
and then all that we see and feel is false. Then we are totally wrong about everything. But then he

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remembered that God is a figure of goodness, and so he would have no reason to lie to us. So he
though about a powerful evil figure that would get pleasure just by showing us lies and making
us believe that these lies are true. Then simple facts like 1+1=2 can be completely false and like
that all our beliefs and sciences. And this idea can be assimilated to Ibn Sinas example of the
link between truth and reality. He actually gave an example of our lives being all dreams and that
we just might be brains in a mad scientists lab. All of this can make us question ourselves about
how did the philosophers finished their work. Well actually Descartes was having a really deep
though about how to find an absolute truth. And he succeeded in that. We was going back so
much in the known truths that he finally found an undeniable statement. He called it the cogito
and it was a simple fact : I think so I am. Indeed this simple statement was undeniable. We
could be controlled by anyone or believing anything, as soon as we can think about something
we have the confirmation that we exist.
Concerning Nietzsche, he had a really original conception of the truth. He actually asks
the following question : why do we always prefer the truth? Nietzsche, using this question, says
that the truth is first of all a value. In other words its vital for the human race to always want to
know the truth. And if the reality has a long time been considered as an illusion, its because this
reality changes constantly and she enables the man to control himself and his environment. And
thats where the knowledge of the truth comes in. Indeed the truth helps the man to understand all
that is new to him. For Nietzsche, the truth was also a method that falsification the reality and
denies all the daily changes in the world. So what we call truth is really a mistake useful to the
development of life. Indeed for him, man made a statement true when it was useful to him. And
the real truth is the one that we were defining as an illusion : the sensitive truth.

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Now there is the well-known scientific truth. Let;s first take a look at the mathematics known as
the pure science and especially the geometry. It refers to the essence of objects. For example if
we talk about a geometrical figure with 3 angles and that the sum of it angles equals to 180 then
you directly think of a triangle. And that without daring the figure. So a mathematical statement
is considered as true when its build using a deduction of a system of axioms. In science for a
statement to be true, it needs to be certified thanks to facts, so theyre dependent to the reality.
But we need to say that to have an hypothesis to verify we have to make an anticipation of the
reality. Like the essence of the triangle which is not exactly the reality, its instead the system of
links between the object. So we can say that the scientific truth is build by the spirit; its not a
description of the world but its a new rebuilt version of it.
As a conclusion, we can definitely say that truth is a source of controversy. Indeed we can
see that Descartes was trying to destroy all the truths that were there in order to fin the one
undeniable absolute truth : which he find with tine cogito. And in his side Nietzsche was looking
at the truth like a falsification of the reality invented by men to satisfy their needs. Finally we
also saw the scientific truth that associates an object to his essence. And so, we can say that tits
true that there are many conceptions of the truth. But wait, what is the truth again?