“Truth Cures”
This publication follows in the tradition of truth-seeking vis-à-vis dialectic. The format is active, allowing for ideas to be seen as they should be: unfixed, fluid notions of reality, amenable to change when tested by logic, evidence, and alternative perspective.
Broadly speaking, the aim of truth-seeking is to establish a sound foundation on which to build beliefs about the world. Beliefs about the world lead one to take, or not take, action in accordance with such beliefs. Actions and omissions affect the world. In the aggregate, they steer the course a society takes on one matter or another.
The decisions we make collectively can, and do, have profound consequences. Any system of government is only as good as its constituent parts. In a democracy, whichever form it takes, the onus is, by definition, placed on the body politic (i.e. the “people”) to craft policy, either directly or indirectly. Policy, in turn, shapes law, and law affects the lives of those living under it. How people are affected by law depends on its underlying wisdom (or lack thereof), and, by extension, on the wisdom of the body politic. You and I, as members of the body politic, are here to develop our civic chops and beliefs about the world in order to, if only tenuously, make our lives and the lives of those around us better.
This publication is a tiny attempt in a tiny corner of the internet to provide a forum for dialectic. The ancient Greek philosophers favored dialectic, or the pursuit of objective truth through forwarding competing, antithetical arguments toward an eventual synthesis, or a better understanding of a subject than the interlocutors had originally. This is not to be mistaken for rhetoric, which makes use of logical tricks and appeals to emotion. Rhetoric is a means to winning a debate, but not to getting at truth. While the term dialectic has been used by a number of thinkers to mean a number of things, for our purposes, we will use the above, classical definition.
Contributors and commentators are selected for their intellectual rigor and earnestness, as well as for their impulse and talent for engagement. Thoughtful comments are welcome, and I will publish them regardless of the positions they forward, provided they are well-constructed, responsive to the subject matter at hand, and devoid of ad hominem aggression.
You will find that there is also ample space for humor and hyperbole. Truth-seeking is arduous. Injecting a bit of levity here and there, I find, is critical to staying sane.