Truth and Truthfulness

Author: Bernard Williams
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400825148
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 343

Book Description
What does it mean to be truthful? What role does truth play in our lives? What do we lose if we reject truthfulness? No philosopher is better suited to answer these questions than Bernard Williams. Writing with his characteristic combination of passion and elegant simplicity, he explores the value of truth and finds it to be both less and more than we might imagine. Modern culture exhibits two attitudes toward truth: suspicion of being deceived (no one wants to be fooled) and skepticism that objective truth exists at all (no one wants to be naive). This tension between a demand for truthfulness and the doubt that there is any truth to be found is not an abstract paradox. It has political consequences and signals a danger that our intellectual activities, particularly in the humanities, may tear themselves to pieces. Williams's approach, in the tradition of Nietzsche's genealogy, blends philosophy, history, and a fictional account of how the human concern with truth might have arisen. Without denying that we should worry about the contingency of much that we take for granted, he defends truth as an intellectual objective and a cultural value. He identifies two basic virtues of truth, Accuracy and Sincerity, the first of which aims at finding out the truth and the second at telling it. He describes different psychological and social forms that these virtues have taken and asks what ideas can make best sense of them today. Truth and Truthfulness presents a powerful challenge to the fashionable belief that truth has no value, but equally to the traditional faith that its value guarantees itself. Bernard Williams shows us that when we lose a sense of the value of truth, we lose a lot both politically and personally, and may well lose everything.

Truth & Truthfulness

Author: Bernard Williams
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691102764
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
What does it mean to be truthful? What role does truth play in our lives? What do we lose if we reject truthfulness? Bernard Williams explores the value of truth and finds it to be both less and more than we might imagine.

Radical Honesty: How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth

Author: Brad Blanton
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780970693846
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This new edition of the source book fo the whole Radical Honest movement includes Brad's accumulated observations since of 1994 of those people whose lives have been transformed by getting out of the seld--made jails of their minds into the truth they have always known.

The Honest-to-Goodness Truth

Author: Patricia C. McKissack
Publisher: Aladdin
ISBN: 9780689853951
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
From Coretta Scott King Award–winning author Patricia C. McKissack comes a humorous and poignant picture book about the right time to tell the truth. “Tell the truth and shame the devil,” Libby’s mama has told her. So whatever is Libby doing wrong? Ever since she started telling only the truth, the whole world seems to be mad at her. First, it’s her best friend, Ruthie Mae, who gets upset when Libby tells all their friends that Ruthie Mae has a hole in her sock. Then Willie gives her an ugly look when she tells the teacher he hasn’t done his homework. It seems that telling the truth isn’t always so simple. Can Libby figure out what it really means to be truthful and make amends?

Virtues of Authenticity

Author: Alexander Nehamas
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691001784
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 412

Book Description
The eminent philosopher and classical scholar Alexander Nehamas presents here a collection of his most important essays on Plato and Socrates. The papers are unified in theme by the idea that Plato's central philosophical concern in metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics was to distinguish the authentic from the fake, the original from its imitations. In approach, the collection displays Nehamas's characteristic combination of analytical rigor and sensitivity to the literary form and dramatic effect of Plato's work. Together, the papers represent Nehamas's distinct and original contributions to scholarship on Plato and Socrates and serve as a comprehensive introduction to the thought of these two philosophers. In the book's opening section, Nehamas discusses Plato's representation of Socrates as a model of authentic human goodness, showing that Plato's Socrates is a more skeptical, troubling, and individualistic thinker than is usually supposed. The papers in the second section form a sustained defense of a new and important understanding of Plato's theory of the forms and the evolution of that theory in Plato's later writings. The third section examines Plato's contention that popular entertainment--by which he meant Greek epic and tragic poetry--misleads its audience into a debased life, an argument Nehamas relates to modern anxieties about television and other forms of popular culture. The collection also includes a discussion of Plato's use of the dialogue form in his representation of Socrates and carefully examines the combination of literary and philosophical elements in his work. Nehamas argues in the book that Plato's specific judgments of what is authentic are often flawed, but that his idea of authenticity as the mark of truth, beauty, and goodness is stronger than many modern scholars have assumed. In drawing together Nehamas's many influential ideas about Plato and Socrates, Virtues of Authenticity is a major contribution to the study of ancient Greek philosophy.

Living the Truth

Author: Keith Ablow
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 9780316017824
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
For anyone stuck in a bad relationship, for anyone trapped in a job that's unfulfilling, for anyone who drinks too much or uses food as a drug, for anyone whose lifelong dreams have fallen by the wayside-here's help. Renowned psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow offers surprising and effective new strategies for turning the pain of the past into the power of the future. Drawing on more than 15 years of clinical experience, he presents case studies that reveal how ignoring painful memories can negatively affect every aspect of our lives. Acknowledging that examining the past can be daunting, he presents ideas and exercises that are as comforting and rewarding as they are redemptive. Through Ablow's storytelling skills, empathetic voice, and straight-up advice, the experience of reading this book becomes the first step to a brilliant life.

Honesty

Author: Christian B. Miller
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197567495
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
"Honesty is clearly an important virtue. Parents want to develop it in their children. Close relationships typically depend upon it. Employers value it in their employees. Yet philosophers have said almost nothing about the virtue of honesty in the past fifty years. This book aims to draw attention to this surprisingly neglected virtue. Part One looks at the concept of honesty. It takes up questions such as what does honesty involve, what are the motives of an honest person, how does practical wisdom relate to honesty, and is there anything that connects all the different sides of honesty, including not lying, not stealing, not breaking promises, not misleading others, and not cheating. A central idea is that the honest person reliably does not intentionally distort the facts as she takes them to be. Part Two looks at the empirical psychology of honesty. It takes up the question of whether most people are honest, dishonest, or somewhere in-between. Drawing extensively on recent studies of cheating and lying in particular, the emerging model ends up implying that most of us have a long way to go to reach an honest character"--

A Little SPOT of Honesty

Author: Diane Alber
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781951287269
Category : Conduct of life
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
"This is a story about Honesty. Did you know being HONEST is MORE than just about telling the TRUTH? It helps you shows INTEGRITY and earn RESPECT, too. It also help build strong relationships and encourages people to be HONEST with you. Join a little SPOT Of Honesty as he shows you examples of how to be true to yourself and to others!"--Amazon.com.

I'm Telling the Truth

Author: Pat Thomas
Publisher: Hodder Wayland
ISBN: 9789780750251
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description

The Truth About Lies

Author: Aja Raden
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250272033
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 206

Book Description
Why do you believe what you believe? You’ve been lied to. Probably a lot. We’re always stunned when we realize we’ve been deceived. We can’t believe we were fooled: What was I thinking? How could I have believed that? We always wonder why we believed the lie. But have you ever wondered why you believe the truth? People tell you the truth all the time, and you believe them; and if, at some later point, you’re confronted with evidence that the story you believed was indeed true, you never wonder why you believed it in the first place. In this incisive and insightful taxonomy of lies and liars, New York Times bestselling author Aja Raden makes the surprising claim that maybe you should. Buttressed by history, psychology, and science, The Truth About Lies is both an eye-opening primer on con-artistry—from pyramid schemes to shell games, forgery to hoaxes—and also a telescopic view of society through the mechanics of belief: why we lie, why we believe, and how, if at all, the acts differ. Through wild tales of cons and marks, Raden examines not only how lies actually work, but also why they work, from the evolutionary function of deception to what it reveals about our own. In her previous book, Stoned, Raden asked, “What makes a thing valuable?” In The Truth About Lies, she asks “What makes a thing real?” With cutting wit and a deft touch, Raden untangles the relationship of truth to lie, belief to faith, and deception to propaganda. The Truth About Lies will change everything you thought you knew about what you know, and whether you ever really know it.