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A Brief History of Truth.

June 10th, 2008 | writing

Truth and reasonI’m still buried, but Craver tossed me a torch. Then I started seeing these shadows on the wall and thinking about the nature of truth.

Stumbling around in the dark, I tripped on this incredibly simplified, old history I wrote several years ago based on the English and American literary time periods. (Disclaimer: all dates are approximate and subject to academic quibbling.)

  • Anglo-Saxon Truth (450-1066) - Truth is the honor found in warriors who share fellowship.
  • Middle English (1350-1500) - Truth is bound to the church. People generally accept their place in the chain of being.
  • Renaissance (1500-1680) - Humans themselves contained truth worthy of study and worthy of giving back to God.
  • Neo-Classical (1680-1800) - Truth was a matter of mastering the forms established by ancient Greece and Rome.
  • Romantic (1800-1880) - Truth can be found in our emotions through nature and the sublime.
  • British Victorian (1830-1900) and American Realism and Naturalism (1860-1900) - Truth can be found through logic and reason and the progress they create (inspired by Darwin, Freud, and Marx).
  • Modernism (1900-1960) - There is no truth. Or maybe there fragments of it. Life stinks.
  • Post-Modernism (1960-present?) - There is no truth. Or maybe there are fragments of it. Life is absurd. So is death. So we can do whatever we want. And maybe, just maybe, all voices contain some element of truth.

Which leaves us here, I suppose, with a simple game of questions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-Sx4W2cKlU

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