(School of Mahayana Buddhism, 700 AD onward)
Truth is not message but realization: meditation is Truth realized in action
Zen (Buddhism) has nothing to teach in the way of intellectual analysis; nor has it any set doctrines which are imposed on its followers for acceptance…If asked what Zen teaches, one should answer “Zen teaches nothing”. Zen radically dismantles the mind by denying its most basic functions, such as rational conceptualization, logic, and common sense.
In a certain sense it is right to understand Zen as an anti-philosophy if the term “philosophy” is taken to mean the establishment of “the kingdom of reason”. Zen's stance of “anti-philosophy” maintains that reason in its discursive use is incapable of knowing and understanding what reality is, for example, what human beings are and what their relation to nature is.
According Zen, philosophers are too much the slaves to the conventional way of thinking. which is dualistic through and through. In the absolute oneness of things Zen establishes the foundations of its philosophy. This is characteristic of Zen, this is where Zen transcends logic and overrides the tyranny and misrepresentation of ideas. Zen mistrusts the intellect, does not rely upon traditional and dualistic methods of reasoning, and handles problems after its own original manners. Western philosophers stipulate a tension between man and world: the mind must conform to things and things to the mind. Harmony is achieved through mutual adaptation. Zen philosophy, on the other hand, stipulates an essential unity: the tension between man and world is the result of egocentric delusion. If we destroy that delusion, man's activity his thinking and his doing becomes just an expression of nature itself.
Zen is not an idealistic rejection of sense and matter in order to ascend to a supposedly invisible reality which alone is real. The Zen experience is a direct grasp of the unity of the invisible and the visible, the noumenal and phenomenal, or an experiential realization that any such division is bound to be pure imagination.
That explains why meditation in Zen is an end in itself: meditation is Truth realized in action. As a result, Zen readily dispenses with the Buddhist (or any) scriptures and philosophical discussion in favour of a more intuitive and individual approach to enlightenment. Meditation is a strict discipline: the mind must be made sharp and attentive in order to intuit from itself the Truth of “Buddhahood”.
Zen aims at a kind of certainty: but it is not the logical certainty of philosophical proof, still less the religious certainty that comes with the acceptance of the word of God by the obedience of faith. It is rather the certainty that goes with an authentic metaphysical intuition which is also existential and empirical.
What a Zen master communicates is not a message, it is not a "what", it does not bring "news" which the receiver did not already have, about something the one informed did not yet know. What Zen communicates is an awareness that is potentially already there but is not conscious of itself. Zen is not message but realization, not revelation but consciousness, not truth about but truth within.
* See Suzuki, D.T., Essays in Zen Buddhism, New York: Grove Press, 1949
(Greek founder of Stoicism, 336-246
The Stoic sage finds happiness in the awareness of the truth of the material world
1. All knowledge is a knowledge of sense-objects, and hence truth is simply the correspondence of our impressions to things. How are we to know whether our ideas are correct copies of things? It cannot lie in concepts, since they are of our own making. Nothing is true save sense impressions, and therefore the criterion of truth must lie in sensation itself. It cannot be in thought, but must be in feeling. Real objects, said Zeno, produce in us an intense feeling, or conviction, of their reality. The strength and vividness of the image distinguish these real perceptions from a dream or fancy. Hence the sole criterion of truth is this striking conviction, whereby the real forces itself upon our consciousness, and will not be denied. There is, thus, no universally grounded criterion of truth. It is based, not on reason, but on feeling.
2. Man, in Zeno's view, had the key to true happiness within himself. He must identify with Nature (or Zeus or Providence or the Cosmos, for all were used interchangeably) and strive for self-sufficiency, which meant the rejection of all the external goods and values men traditionally cherish. In place of these, the divine reason given to every person must be cultivated toward the understanding and acceptance of God's universe. Social position is unimportant, and it is possible for the pauper or the king to strive toward the Stoic goal. The true Stoic sage is aware of the laws of Nature and follows them willingly because a beneficent Providence is guiding events. Individual suffering and misfortunes are subsumed under a larger and more important good. The ultimate goal is apathia, a state in which a person is completely indifferent to all but his own divinely given understanding of things. Virtue is defined as knowledge and vice as ignorance. The path to virtue is not easy, however. It demands tough discipline and strict control over natural feelings and reactions such as pleasure, lust, anxiety, and fear. It also demands a great deal of study of both theory and practical science, for only through complete awareness of the truth of the material world can the Stoic sage come to that understanding which gives him happiness.
* Zeno Of Citium. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 4 Dec. 2007
(Greek philosopher, 490-430 B.C.)
Common sense is not conducive to truth, but reason only
Zeno presented his famous paradoxes - Achilles and the tortoise, the arrow, etc - in order to support the claims of Parmenides: that real existence is indivisible, which means it is immobile, immutable, and permanent; the movement, changes, and multiplicity of the world are illusory perceptions based upon sense experiences; truth is accessible by reason alone.
The school of Elea to which Zeno belongs was the first movement to treat pure reason as the sole criterion of truth. Logical consistency and internal theoretic coherence, rather than any sort of observational evidence, guided their entire search for knowledge.
Zeno is remembered as the master of dispute to demonstrate that, once we accept the assumptions of our common sense, we inevitably have to accept the logical consequences of the absurdity and contradiction in common sense in order to show that Parmenides' Being (to eon) is the genuine reality.
He attempted to show the contradictions and inconsistencies in our common sense knowledge. According to our common sense, the world of experience unveils the reality as it is. By demonstrating our common sense knowledge as paradoxical, Zeno exerted himself in proving that Parmenides' Being is the only genuine Reality.
The most important contribution by Zeno and the Eleatic School to the history of the Western philosophy is the clear establishment of the superiority of Reason (nous) both as the principle of Being and of cognition at the same time. They made knowledge of sense experience not only inferior (to that of Reason) but not even worth the name of knowledge at all, because sense experience provides us mere illusion, not truth.
It is also worth noting that, according to Zeno and the Eleatics, truth is for most parts covered up by illusion, prejudices and pre-conceived ideas. In order to "uncover" truth, we must free ourselves from our common sense and its conviction. Thus it was established that common sense is not conducive to philosophical inquires, but rather something which is to be critically questioned and from which we must liberate ourselves in order to pursue philosophical knowledge and truth.
*See Zeno's Paradoxes Wesley Salmon, ed. (Indianapolis, 1970).
(Spanish philosopher, 1898-1985)
Real (not dual) truth: the impressive actuality of the real in sentient intellection
The classical notion of truth is or involves some agreement between thought and things - Zubiri terms it 'dual truth'. Zubiri does not wish to reject this notion, only to reject it as the fundamental meaning of 'truth'. The major problem with the classical idea for him is that it does not provide a reliable path for us to go beyond our perceptions; there is, so to speak, and unbridgeable gap between the world of sense perception and that of real things. But for Zubiri, this problem is a pseudo-problem because it is based on an incorrect analysis of our fundamental act of perception and on a derivative notion of truth. The correct analysis of perception is that of Zubiri's ‘sentient intellection’, according to which we do directly perceive reality in primordial apprehension; this is real truth and never subject to error; error can only arise when we seek to go beyond primordial apprehension via rational processes. Zubiri notes that the real is "in" the intellection, and this "in" is ratification. In sentient intellection truth is found in that primary form which is the impression of reality. The truth of this impressive actuality of the real in and by itself is precisely real truth. Classical philosophy has gone astray on this matter and always thought that truth is constituted in the reference to a real thing with respect to what is conceived or asserted about that thing. It is because of this that Zubiri believes that the classical idea of truth is always what he terms dual truth. But in real truth we do not leave the real thing at all; the intelligence of this truth is not conceptualized but sentient. And in this intellection nothing is primarily conceived or judged; rather, there is simply the real actualized as real and therefore ratified in its reality. Real truth is ratification, and therefore is simple truth.
The traditional view that truth is some sort of agreement of thought and things must be rejected because this notion of truth as agreement of two things, dual truth, is a derivative notion, which must be grounded upon something more fundamental. For Zubiri, the priority of reality is always paramount, and hence the primary meaning of truth, real truth, is impressive actuality of the real in sentient intellection. It is a quality of actualization, not agreement of two disparate things, which as the ground of truth would pose insuperable verification problems.
As such, real truth is imposed on us, not conquered; dual truth, a derivative form of truth, we conquer through our own efforts. Real truth must be sought in primordial apprehension: the real is "in" the intellection, and this "in" is ratification. In sentient intellection truth is found in that primary form which is the impression of reality. The truth of this impressive actuality of the real in and by itself is precisely real truth.
Now, of course, truth and reality are not identical in Zubiri’s philosophy, because there are many realities which are not actualized in sentient intellection, nor do they have any reason to be so. Thus not every reality is true in this sense. Though it does not add any notes, actualization does add truth to the real. Hence truth and reality are different; nor are they mere correlates, because reality is not simply the correlate of truth but its foundation on account of the fact that all actualization is actualization of reality.
* Zubiri Xavier, Sentient Intelligence, L’Harmattan, 1980
(Contemporary Canadian philosopher)
A pluralistic concept of artistic truth
For Zuidervaart the truth content of an art work must be considered not in itself or in a traditional manner, but as coming to revelation by means of an imaginative disclosure in which the truth of the work is revealed. This means that his understanding of the truth content of artworks derives basically from Heidegger’s notion of disclosedness, an understanding of truth that is neither propositional nor derives from a correspondence theory of truth. Considering artistic truth from this perspective implies that truth is revealed in works of art created or brought into existence by human beings. It also implies that truth can take different forms and reveal itself in different ways, similar to the manner in which Dasein reveals or unconceals itself in the clearing that is the surrounding world. The notion of disclosedness implies that truth is relative to the situation in which it reveals itself: it is neither a metaphysical construct nor an eternal truth but is situated and determined historically.
However Heidegger’s notion of disclosedness involves a confrontation between the individual and the truth that is revealed such that the individual must somehow determine authentic unconcealment from the non-authentic. Thus because Dasein’s disclosedness can also be false, the relation between truth and disclosedness becomes problematic. In order to avoid this difficulty, Zuidervaart proposes that we “recognize principles according to which human self-expression, orientation, and discovering can be more or less true”. That is to say that Zuidervaart replaces Heidegger’s notion of disclosedness with the notion of “life-giving disclosure”, a “process in which human beings and other creatures come to flourish”. The principles that are to serve as the bearers of truth are those that people hold in common and that in turn hold people in common, although Zuidervaart is quick to add that the principles he is referring to are not those of an ‘unchanging and universal human nature’. Rather, they are “shared reference points that have emerged historically through clashes between societies and within them”. This implies that, in place of Heidegger’s existential confrontation of the individual with his or her own existence as a thinking being, Zuidervaart substitutes a pluralistic approach founded in his so-called ‘shared principles of society’. The truth of disclosedness can then be measured, as it were, with respect to such principles, and the validity of the truth claim can be determined. The three domains that Zuidervaart invokes as revealing the truth content of a work are authenticity, or the artist’s intentions, significance, or the public’s appreciation of the work, and integrity, or the more or less harmonious content of the work, that is its coherence. Thus it would seem that for the traditionally singular framework of epistemology, Zuidervaart has substituted a plural in the form of social norms and validity principles that we hold in common and that bind us together.
Critics of Zuidervaart have pointed out that establishing criteria for the validity of a truth claim would pose limits on interpretation, limits that artists would undoubtedly seek to surpass if they were to be erected as normative criteria for art interpretation. It would seem that the open-ended character of artworks, the notion that Zuidervaart borrows from Heidegger’s notion of disclosedness, would have to forgo any attempt to impose validity criteria on art interpretation in order to remain open-ended. It would seem, further, that the notions of truth in art and discussions concerning the interpretation of art would have to involve different and changing criteria. One wonders if truth in art and common social principles are not in fact two different discourses. Would art interpreters not simply choose whatever principle they thought best to illustrate the validity of their own aesthetic judgements?
* Lambert Zuidervaart, Artistic Truth: Aesthetics, Discourse and Imaginative Disclosure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.