truthfulness

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Truthfulness is a mindset that involves the pursuit of truth. Truthfulness is not a property of statements, but rather expresses a person's relationship to the truth or falseness of statements. Truthfulness can only produce false statements through an error. Truthfulness includes the willingness to check what is believed to be true.

Truthfulness refers to the subjective “holding true ” of one's own statement in a concrete context .

Definitions

According to Otto Friedrich Bollnow , truthfulness turns inward, that is, it lives in the relationship between people and themselves: "It means inner transparency and the free standing of people for themselves. [...] An honest lie is something else as an untruthfulness. […] But untruthfulness begins where a person is fooling himself, where he does not admit to himself that he is lying, where he rather sets the situation in such a way that he gives himself the appearance of honesty preserves. […] But it becomes much more dangerous when he sets the situation in such a way that he believes he can answer for his statement and his behavior. ”( Otto Friedrich Bollnow : Wesen Text . Wickert, p. 229 ff.)

Truthfulness in the Christian-Judaist context can essentially be derived from the biblical understanding going beyond social norms and has its origin in the connection to God / Jesus Christ ("I am [...] the truth", Jn 14.6 EU ), according to the Old Testament in the 10 commandments (“You should not give false testimony […]” - so do not tell untruth). In this sense, the growing generation of the Christian culture was socialized. Comenius , John Locke and August Hermann Francke provided the main ideas. Especially in the German education of the Enlightenment at the end of the 18th century, truthfulness was emphasized as a basic requirement. From a philosophical point of view, honesty and truthfulness are combined with the conscience present in all people , which implements a basic compass about the knowledge of wrong and right.

Albert Schweitzer sees in truthfulness above all loyalty to oneself: “In fact, however, it is the reverence that we have to show our own existence that keeps us always true to ourselves by responding to every disguise that we would have made use in this or that situation, renounce, and in the struggle to remain absolutely truthful, not flag. "( Albert Schweitzer : The teaching of reverence for life . p. 31.)

According to Immanuel Kant , the truth is at the same time the dignity of the other, because the lie contradicts the commandment of self-respect , which we humans as rational beings have and should preserve from one another. Hence, the lie violates the dignity of the human person. The foundation of Kant's philosophy, the idea of ​​“ duty ”, truthfulness, is also to be understood as the unconditional “duty” to unconditional truth; according to Kant, it is a “requirement of reason”. According to Ulrich Wickert , truthfulness in political responsibility means not following the majority or opinion polls, but rather orienting one's actions exclusively to reason of responsible responsibility, to renounce any populist zeitgeist: “It means not to stir up fear or, wherever it reigns, it to fight instead of engaging in politics with fear . Fear turns off the mind. ”( Ulrich Wickert : The Book of Virtues . P. 150.)

In his theory of communicative action, Jürgen Habermas differentiates between various validity claims with recourse to speech act theory : truth, correctness of norms of action, appropriateness of value standards, truthfulness and comprehensibility. On the level of subjective truthfulness, the "speaker" makes the claim that "the manifest speech intention is meant as it is expressed."

Quotes

"Adultery, killing an unborn child, lying, cheating, discrimination against others or serious theft are signs that fidelity, right to life, truthfulness, respect for the person and property of others have disappeared from sight."

- Catholic adult catechism

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Article “Truthfulness”. In: Georg Klaus, Manfred Buhr (Hrsg.): Philosophical dictionary. 11th edition, Leipzig 1975.
  2. ↑ Friedrich Koch : The Kaspar Hauser Effect. About dealing with children. Opladen 1995. ISBN 978-3810013590 , page 23ff
  3. ↑ (Kant, Werke [Academy edition] Vol. 6, p. 429).
  4. ↑ (Kant, vol. 8, p. 427), quoted from Friedrich Graf von Westphalen : The limits of word use, the truthfulness and the right . In: Lawyer Gazette . 2004, p. 665
  5. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: Explanations on the concept of communicative action [1982]. In: ders .: preliminary studies and additions to the theory of communicative action. Frankfurt / M. 1995, pp. 571-606, here: p. 588.

Web links

Wiktionary: Truthfulness  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Publication notes

General

Truthfulness and Justice