Scruton on Truth

"The interest in truth: There is another feature that characterises philosophy, and distinguishes it from neighbouring modes of thought. Not all human thinking is directed towards truth. In art and myth we allow ourselves the free use of fictions. Truth lurks within those fictions, and in the case of myth a kind of revelation may advance behind the veil of falsehood. But neither art nor myth is assessed on the grounds of its literal truth, and neither is discarded merely because it presents no valid arguments. In philosophy, however, truth is all-important, and determines the structure of the discipline. Validity, indeed, is normally defined in terms of truth, a valid argument being one in which the premises could not be true while the conclusion is false. Even those who believe that philosophical questions have no answers, assert this to be true; and the ‘discovery’ that they have no answers is made only by the attempt to find a true one.

We need to interpret our experiences, and frequently make use of fictions in doing so. Sometimes these fictions are obscurely intertwined with truths, as in the mysteries of religion. When interpreting the world our purpose is not merely to know it - perhaps not even to know it - but to establish and justify our place within its boundary. Many things assist us in this task besides religion: art, story-telling, symbolism, ritual, along with common morality and rules of conduct. When we refer to the philosophy of the Talmud, or the philosophy of John Keats, we have this kind of thing in mind. Fragments of this ‘philosophy’ are aimed at abstract truth and so are philosophical in the true sense; but most are a matter of religious, aesthetic and moral interpretation, whose primary goal is not truth but consolation.

There are philosophers who have repudiated the goal of truth — Nietzsche, for example, who argued that there are no truths, only interpretations. But you need only ask yourself whether what Nietzsche says is true, to realise how paradoxical it is. (If it is true, then it is false! - an instance of the so-called ‘liar’ paradox.) Likewise, the French philosopher Michel Foucault repeatedly argues as though the ‘truth’ of an epoch has no authority outside the power-structure that endorses it. There is no trans-historical truth about the human condition. But again, we should ask ourselves whether that last statement is true: for if it is, it is false. There has arisen among modernist philosophers a certain paradoxism which has served to put them out of communication with those of their contemporaries who are merely modern. A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t."

--- Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey / Roger Scruton