Relating to Truth

What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain understanding must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do…. What good would it do me if the truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I recognized her or not, and producing in me a shudder of fear rather than a trusting devotion? Must not the truth be taken up into my life? That is what I now recognize as the most important thing.

So wrote Søren Kierkegaard in his 1835 journal entry. In a way, these words can be taken as an epigraph to his life as a whole, offering numerous gestures towards his key preoccupations: his critique of Hegelian idealism and abstraction in general, his disparaging of aesthetic existence, his loathing of religious formalism, intellectualism, and hypocrisy, to name but a few. In a way, it also speaks to a central element of the craft of living—the opening up to the demands of existential truth upon our lives, the whole question of one’s relation to truth. “Relation”—that’s the word! It encompasses, at the very least, our perceptual capacities (the ability to see the truth), existential appropriations (understanding it as it is for us), and responsible action (the enactment and inhabitation of truth).

And it is here that the enormity and difficulty of the whole issue come to the fore. After all, what do we even mean by such a univocal term as “truth”? That is, what kind of truth do we have in mind here? Are Kierkegaard’s words to be taken in an exclusively religious sense? If not, what possible other meanings could be implied? And then, what do we mean to say that truth has a “claim upon us”? What does it consist of? Finally, if I were to accede to the “claim” of truth after recognizing or perceiving it as such, how is the “taking up” of truth to take place? What kind of attitudes, qualities, and shaping does it imply? How could an askesis (training) in truthfulness be conceived off? Does it even make sense to talk about it in some generic sense?

I am asking this because I want to know and because I want to live it. I want to discover more of what it means to live truthfully.