Redefining Truth: Insights from Eastern and Western Perspectives

Chapter Seventeen | Free One Million Minds: Truth Defined: Searching Beyond Assumptions

12/31/2024

Duration | 3 minutes 59 seconds
Guest: Dr. Symeon Rodger

Synopsis

In this chapter, Dr. Symeon Rodger and Jamie Meyer explore the concept of truth, discussing the modern notion of a “post-truth world” and contrasting Western intellectual views of truth with other cultures’ perspectives. Dr. Rodger explains that truth in the West is often seen as a propositional, intellectual concept, while other cultures view it as the way things truly are, with a tangible, physical basis. They also delve into how different traditions, such as Taoism and early Christianity, approach truth and its inexpressible nature, emphasising the importance of direct experience over rigid definitions. The chapter touches on the paradoxical nature of trying to define truth while acknowledging its ineffable qualities.

dialogue summary

Dr. Symeon Rodger:
It’s often said we live in a post-truth world, which is a real problem. It may build on the idea that the West typically has thought of truth as a proposition, like truth is an intellectual proposition. Whereas other cultures typically treat truth as the way things are. So truth has an actual sort of physical basis. Truth is the way things are.

The way the universe functions is true. Your idea about it, you may say, is a truth, but it’s inevitably not because your idea is always in a construct that’s partial. There’s no way of putting that truth into words. It can’t be done. And anyone who knows how to… Yeah. And systems that have been devised to navigate people to that greater reality around the world have always been very reluctant to describe them. So that’s why you have expressions like, you know, Taoism saying, the Tao that could be described is not the Tao.

Jamie Meyer:
Right, so if you describe it, because it’s not the way.

Dr. Symeon Rodger:
Yeah, it’s not the real thing, it’s your idea. That’s all it is. Or even, strangely enough, in early Christianity, in Eastern Christianity, there was an extreme reluctance to define things too carefully. So definitions, what were actually called dogmas, were not absolute statements of “this is the way it is.” They were statements of sort of “not this, not that.”

Okay, we just exclude alternatives that are off track, and the middle is where you want to be, but it is kind of amorphous, always leaving it open to experience. So the funny thing is, in that ancient Christian mystical tradition, the idea was if you haven’t had a direct experience of the absolute reality, you shouldn’t be talking about any of this stuff. You should just shut up and do the work to get yourself there and not pretend that you know. Not go off and teach at university or something like this.

Jamie Meyer:
Hmm.

Dr. Symeon Rodger:
So it becomes a little bit like— I mean, even in Roman Catholicism, which unfortunately developed into this extremely rationalistic version of Christianity. And a lot of that rationalism was partly built by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. But there is, you know, the story that, you know, people don’t want to tell, which is that Aquinas, eventually before he died, had a direct experience of the supreme divine love. And then he said, “Everything I’ve written is straw.” Garbage.

Of course, the Church didn’t want to tell that story. They wanted people to read what he wrote. So there you go.

Credits Roll

References

Roman Catholicism is the largest branch of Christianity, characterised by its traditions, doctrines, and practices, with a focus on the authority of the Pope, the importance of the sacraments, and the teachings of the Church as central to faith and moral life.

Thomas Aquinas was a 13th-century Dominican friar and theologian whose writings, particularly in Summa Theologica, integrated Aristotelian philosophy with Christian doctrine, laying the foundation for much of Western Catholic theology and philosophy.

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