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.

The Craft of Living as "Technical" Knowledge

Thematically, this is a follow-up to the post “Straying Afield of Oneself.”

An essential part of this blog has been a repeated reflection, metacognition of sorts, on the activity practiced in this space. There is an intentional double-meaning to “practiced” as I intend it, referring both to the “production” of content and a type of “exercise” on myself. With all proper deference, I see such a double-meaning at work, for instance, in the Ecclesiastes and Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. These authors produce meditations, and they meditate. Thus, to see their works merely as collections of inspirational sayings is to miss the point of it all. True, there are some good thoughts to be had in there, but it is the art of inscaping, the continual immersion into those essential axioms, that unlocks their power. Sustained growth and mindfulness rather than originality of thought carry the day here.

With that as a backdrop, I thought of sharing a quote from John Sellars’ The Art of Living. Sellars notes that

in the technical conception of philosophy, philosophy is conceived as an art (techne) directed towards the cultivation of an ideal disposition of the soul, a disposition that may be called excellence (arete) or wisdom (sophia). Thus one might say that the subject matter of this art is one’s soul (psyche) and its goal (telos) is to transform or to take care of one’s soul. The product (ergon) will be the transformed disposition of the soul, namely excellence or wisdom. This transformed disposition will… necessarily impact upon an individual’s behaviour, expressing itself in their actions. Alternatively, one might say that this art is concerned with one’s life (bios), that this is its subject matter, and that its goal is to transform one’s life. Thus one might say that the product of this art will be the actions (erga) that constitute one’s life, highlighting its status as a performative art (praktike techne) in which the performance itself is the product. This product conceived as an activity may be characterized variously as a good flow of life, as living well, and as well-being or happiness (eudaimonia).*

Rather than carrying the usual connotation of “specialized,” therefore, Sellar’s concept of “technical” knowledge tracks the word techne or craft. It is a type of knowledge that amounts to an acquisition of intellectual and moral skills through exercises such as clarification, repetition, restatement, and visualization for the purpose of appropriate action and the pursuit of the good life. (The fact that Christians insist on the necessity of divine intervention and aid on all these levels does not take away from the structure of “technical” knowledge.)

With that in mind, I aspire to an act of blogging—I am looping back here to the opening paragraph—as a type of self-styling, a crafting of self in view of my core identity values: surrender, essentialism, attentiveness, life-affirmation, equanimity, self-control, integrity, mind-growth, wholeness, and love. And while I would love for people to find at least some of the content useful—what blogger wouldn’t?—there is something intrinsically valuable in such an act of written self-articulation and accountability. “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on….”

*For the purposes of the blog post, I have taken the liberty of inserting simplified transliterations of the Greek terms. I have also left out some Greek words. Click here to see the original quote with all references intact.