On Truthtelling is an essay by one person
Already I'm simplifying. What we write or what we are is always the work
of many people. Nonetheless it is convenient for me to say that my essay
is by one person. Likewise to give a reason for doing so. At the beginning
of my essay, I admit that I've always wanted to be a great writer and thinker.
"It's a hot, muggy, overcast day and I sit here in my little room sweating
profusely. At the same time I look for some sort of inspiration, some sort
of meaning, some sort of direction, indeed, some sort of future for myself.
For the fact of the matter is that, right now, right at this point in my
life, I'm afraid of the future, afraid of my age and my aging, afraid of,
to speak figuratively for a moment, putting to flight all the romantic songbirds
of my soul. Afraid of – and still speaking figuratively – going
out of this life not with a bang but a whimper. Is it any wonder then that,
mindful of my youthful dreams and what has guided me thus far, I wish more
than ever now for a bright star before me?
And what could this bright star be if not, somehow renewed and revitalized,
my long-held wish to be a great writer and thinker?..."
As far as my credentials go, they are both modest and substantial. Modest
in the formal sense and substantial otherwise. Cited below is what I wrote
to several publishers who politely declined my work.
"I'm a graduate of the University of Ottawa (PhD in Philosophy – 2003)
who has recently completed an essay called On Truthtelling. The
work is unique in that it combines the performative and constative sides
of truthtelling: the essayistic, autobiographical, confessional, testimonial,
dramatic, dialogic, and, finally, argumentative modes of telling the truth.
Being such a novel approach, it is difficult to categorize and so its scholarly
significance may not be apparent. Concerned as it is with what might be called
the storytelling side of telling the truth as much as the speculative,
it brings the scholarly dimension into play only indirectly. At the same
time this dimension is treated as a subject within a larger one (i.e., truthtelling).
In a complex way, the scholarly is given a voice and, indeed, has several
voices with some not averse to challenging my own. What I can say in favour
of this is that it does what truthtellers have not been doing for
over two thousand years, that is, not telling the truth about themselves while
telling the truth about other subjects.
In dealing with the subject of truthtelling as necessarily demanding and
taking in the subject of myself (as the one who presumes to be able to tell
the truth about it), I've attempted to make this philosophical essay
a work of art. Along with different voices, it combines different styles
to counter what would otherwise be unwieldy. Understood as complication and
even over-complication, truthtelling is multifaceted, multi-factual, conflict-ridden,
changeable, and often hegemonic even while being subversive and unending.
Another relevant point is that my essay is in some sense my CV, my credentials,
my authorization for telling the truth about truthtelling."
On Truthtelling has many voices
It is with several voices that I do the best I can with my subject. First,
with my own voice or, rather, voices that arise not only from my
changing over time, but from being a divided self. Second, with ones that
I've purposely created for this essay. And, finally, with ones that
come from the past. With respect to the ones that come from the past, they
are mainly professors of philosophy who commented on the essays I wrote as
university assignments. With respect to the ones that I've purposely
created for this essay, they mainly belong to three dramatis personae: Theodore
Baumgarten, a professor of philosophy, Andrew Chalmers,
his colleague, and Alice, a twenty-two year-old student.
The first two represent more or less what I contend with as a truthteller.
The third represents the deepest and most fanciful parts of myself.
Strictly speaking, I do not involve myself in a dialogue with these characters.
However, they do react to me as I to them. Moreover, they themselves carry
on dialogues. I don't identify them as is done in a stage play. The
reason for this is that a dominant voice is necessary in a work that's
trying to get at the truth of something.
The dialogue below – between Alice and Professor Baumgarten – starts
off the thematic section called "A New Turn" (No. 30).
– Excuse me! I'm looking for Professor Baumgarten.
– I'm he. Who are you?
– A strange mix of things. But principally a new voice assigned
to these proceedings.
– You're quite beautiful. Forgive my colleague. He had a bit too
much to drink. New voice, you say?
– Well, certainly not one to overrule yours or in any way threaten
it. After all, I'm only an undergraduate.
– Please, come in. Sit down. You're certainly a welcome relief.
I must tell you, I've almost been stretched to the breaking point of late.
This business of endlessly circling around a subject, of not cutting through
to something clear – do you know what I mean? – it's a horror!
– I understand. It's not at all what you're used to.
– Oh, you've said so much. Thirty years of teaching students to
think clearly and logically about truth and now this.
– There's unfairness and injustice and a certain amount of cruelty
you've had to put up with.
– Oh, you're a wonder! You're an angel!
– You've been a captive audience in the worst sense. Under normal
conditions, you wouldn't have tolerated it. You would've walked away.
– Especially when it goes on and on, dear girl, and seems to be
plugged into your very thoughts. To be maliciously circumventing every
possible objection you can make.
– You've suffered a great deal. And if it weren't for the fact
this is a kind of thought-experiment, it wouldn't be possible to justify
it.
On Truthtelling is both scholarly and non-scholarly
To say that scholarship is but one species of truthtelling is not to stop
being a scholar. No more than to bring these other species simply into view.
Turning away from the scholarly without turning completely away can only
be done by letting these other species of truthtelling play about
and, as it were, have their say. Trying to tell the truth about truthtelling
without doing this would be like trying to tell the truth about it without
trying to tell the truth about this very telling.
Hence it is not only with an argumentative voice or voices
that I speak but also with autobiographical, confessional, testimonial, poetic,
and dramatic ones. To be sure, argument has always enjoyed
a special status. We rely upon it even when we hardly think about it. Its
truth is always useful in some way or other. But with all that is contradictory
and uncertain in truthtelling, argument can never be – as much as it
might strive or strain to be – the whole of it.
To promote a subject both timely and close to my heart
Why promote? Why timely? Why close to my heart? It almost takes the essay
that I wrote to answer these questions. Leaving
aside the most egoistic and self-serving elements, I will say that truthtelling
is the one great subject that so far has been left out of all truthtelling.
The hyphen or space that normally keeps the word truth separate from the
word telling represents an ideal eroded but never erased or at least
never erased or re-erased without re-emerging. Or perhaps it is never erased
but only threatened to be erased. This threat of erasure carries
with it a good deal of truth (which indicates that there is more than
one ideal) but only as much as the whole of truthtelling can stand.
Should I say that I've taken all of this on out of a sense of duty? Why,
then, perhaps the best I can do is to reproduce once again something that
was part of my proposal to publishers.
"If there be such a thing as a truth industry with diverse interests that
are not fully one with valuing and telling the truth and in fact may conflict
with these, then there is a flaw that threatens the ideality permeating this
industry and holding it together as much as these not so compatible interests.
Since this threatened ideality is a constant call for some extraordinary
commitment, for some sacrifice crediting to it the highest value, then I
feel I'm in a position to claim that my own work bears all the earmarks
of such an enterprise."
To reach out with it in the most diverse way
What I've laid out as the work that I call On Truthtelling includes
other of my works (i.e., mostly university assignments). It is therefore
something like a mini-corpus. It is diverse enough to engender
a diversity of responses. Part of my work's diversity is its being
an ongoing response to itself. This is partly through the essay's having
different voices. Some of these voices represent what is critical from the
outside. Some represent the difference between a past and present self. And
some a perpetually divided self. In a sense this thoroughness of self-response
is like having an argument that one thinks can't be topped. There is
fear and excitement in anticipating all who might attempt to do so.
To give a bad conscience to the scholarly community
As a truthteller, the maintenance of my good conscience is a sort of aggression
against others. Principally those esteemed and learned others who say so
little against themselves. My aggression then is the result of the threat
they pose to me as one who strives to be like them without coverup and
quasi-deception.