Dutch Proverbs V
De waarheid kan geen herberg vinden
“De waarheid kan geen herberg vinden”
“The truth cannot find an inn”
“De waarheid kan geen herberg vinden.” Often, truth is not wished for, it is not wanted, it cannot find a place to rest its head. Often, we do not welcome the truth. Perhaps the truth is too shocking, too unfamiliar, too dark, and we would rather not see it. The truth is what is, but in order for what is to touch us, we have to let it touch us. The truth is what is, but for us to know it, we have to be willing to allow its being into our presence.
It is said, that “all men by nature desire to know” (Aristotle, Metaphysics, I. 980a1), but is this really so? Perhaps more often than not, we do not want the truth. When the truth means our shame, means the questioning of all we hold dear, means the exposure of our flaws and weaknesses, we do not want the truth. When welcoming the truth, means admitting that previously, we violently shut it out, we do not want the truth. For man, as a finite and imperfect being, the truth is painful. The truth, questions his being. When what is, questions what we have become, our instinct is to turn away from what is. Hence, why Musonius Rufus used to say:
“The philosopher’s school is a doctor’s office. You must leave not pleased, but pained.” (Rufus, 90)
The truth is often painful, for it forces us to admit, that we are not living according to it. Hence, for Rufus, the fact that ‘de waarheid geen herberg kan vinden’, is often an indication that truth is being spoken. The more violent our attempts to shut it out, or the more we feel shamed into silence at its touch, the higher the chances that truth is in our presence. When we say something, and the other answers with uncanny silence, chances are we have spoken some truth.
It is said, that we naturally desire the truth. We naturally seek out truth, and when we come across truth, we accept it with open arms. But do we? The proverb responds negatively, but perhaps only seemingly so. It is because we are sick, that we do not want the truth. It is because we are not naturally, that we do not welcome the truth. As Rufus says, when truth is knocking at the door, we ought to show different expressions and sentiments to go along with how the truth affects the part of our mind “which is healthy and the part which is sick.” (Rufus, 90) When our mind is healthy, we naturally welcome the truth, we rejoice at its presence. But when our mind is sick, that is, when it holds unfounded and destructive beliefs, it does not want the truth, and it feels shame at its presence.
The addict does not want to hear about the negative consequences of his addiction. He is enslaved to the object of his addiction, and thus, when the truth questions this enslavement, he shuts it out, for he values more the object of his addiction, than the truth. He is more concerned for the survival of the object of his addiction, than for the presence of the truth. Precisely, because he is addicted, because he is sick. He who is not addicted to the object, has no problem in listening to the truth concerning it. It is our own state of being, that determines whether we’ll accept the truth.
There are those who claim that, naturally, no human seeks out the truth. It is said that we have to be driven by forces that have nothing to do with ‘truth’, to desire truth. Why does one seek to be a philosopher? Because one wants to be praised for being wise. Why does one study the natural sciences? Because one wants to manipulate nature for one’s own gain.
But in all these examples, it is precisely because we are ‘sick’, that we do not seek out the truth naturally.
It is because we do not realize, that wisdom is to be wished for, even if no praise would ever touch our ears. It is because we do not realize, that knowledge of nature is to be wished for, merely to abide in its truth, and not only to manipulate it. It is precisely because we are sick, and have adopted other motives than our nature as truth-welcoming-beings, that we do not welcome the truth. It is because we have lost confidence in ourselves, that we want praise, instead of truth. It is because the truth would destroy the argument of the doctorate that we are working on, that we do not welcome it. It is because the truth about a medicine, would mean we have possibly injured ourselves and our loved ones by taking it. It is when other motives come to stand in the way of merely accepting what is, that the truth cannot find an inn.
Aristotle might be right, all men do by nature desire to know. It is our nature, to welcome truth in, but where do you find a man who is what he is? Where do you find a man, who is aligned with his nature as the being that lets the truth of Being shine forth? We do not welcome truth in, not because man does not desire truth, but because we have yet to become men.
When certain philosophers question Aristotle’s saying, it is because they take as their model for what is true about man, not a man, but a slave. They take as their model, not a healthy mind, but a sick mind. A being, who has attached himself to what is foreign to himself; an object, a title, a food, a belief, a way of living, and has come to desire this so much, that he wants to have it survive at all costs, even at the cost of truth. Someone who is addicted to an object in the world, and not to the truth. In Dutch, the word for addiction is ‘verslaving’, literally, ‘en-slaving’. In an addiction, we have willingly made ourselves a slave to something foreign to ourselves; a drug, a belief, a person, a title, etc. This thing has started choosing for us, and thus, we are no longer free to welcome the truth, because we are no longer what we are. We no longer let the truth mould us, but we let our addiction mould the truth.
We avert our gaze, at information concerning side-effects of a drug, when we have already taken the drug. We refuse to see the other for what he is, for if we’d do so, we’d have to break the relationship so nourishing to our hearts. It is because we have willingly attached ourselves to the drug, or to the relationship, that we no longer welcome the truth.
In this sense, the truth can never find a home, because we ourselves have departed from what we are, from our natural home as free beings, open towards the truth, whatever this truth might be.
What are we, what is a person, but this openness towards what is, and the power to choose what it puts its attention to among what is? This power to freely use whatever we put our attention to; words, limbs, tools, feeling, arguments, foods, etc. We use these things, but we are different from these things. We are seemingly attached to these things, in a closeness impossible to put into words, but we use these things. And “isn’t the cutter who uses the tools different from the tools he’s cutting with?” (Plato, Alcibiades, 129c)
In our deepest essence, we are nothing but this pure openness towards what is, towards the truth. In our deepest essence, we are a being that allows truth to touch it, but that also has the choice, to prefer something other than the truth. By nature, we are this openness towards the truth, this desire towards the truth. It is when we depart from this essence, and we become attached to things, that we come to value these things more than the primal openness that we are. And consequently, in a willing enslavement to these things, we come to desire these things more, than we desire the truth. And consequently, the truth cannot find an inn, when it opposes what we have come to desire. For we are no longer the inn at which truth finds its home, but the inn at which things come to rest, while the truth is left in the dark of night. Paradoxically, it is because we are this openness to what is, that we come to value a specific thing over the truth. We are this openness to what is, and this power to choose what specific thing we put our attention to among all that is. In this exercising of our essence, we fall prey to becoming too attached to one specific thing, and this slowly closes the primal openness that we are. When the truth comes crushing down on us with all its openness, it feels as violence, for it asks of us, to open up once again, from an enclosing which we have come to love.
Nietzsche writes:
“How much truth can a certain mind endure; how much truth can it dare? -these questions became for me ever more and more the actual test of values.”
(Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, 3)
The truth questions us, it questions what we have become. How much truth are we willing to let in, even when it pains us, when it shows us our wretchedness, when it painfully burns through our false beliefs and our attachments? The value of a philosopher is not so much determined by how much truth he is able to find, but how much truth he is able to bear. To what degree is he willing, to sacrifice his own attachments, for the truth?
If the person, in its most primordial essence, is this openness towards the truth, it would follow that to know ourselves, is to allow ourselves to be open towards the truth. All men by nature desire to know, because in our deepest essence, we are this desire for truth, this openness to what is. But the truth cannot find an inn, because we no longer seek to find ourselves. We seek not the deepest essence of ourselves, as this openness, this desire for what is, but we seek only what we have become; a being that values its attachments more than it values itself. All men by nature desire to know, but we have departed from our nature.
“de waarheid kan geen herberg vinden.”
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Problem, Life, Deception: Philosophical Essays
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09SPC6C19
It is a collection of 22 essays, most of which are edited versions of essays to be found on this Substack. But it also includes 2 other essays, not to be found anywhere else:
‘A tyranny of problems’: through the philosophies of Kant, Michel Meyer, and Nietzsche, I postulate that how we conceptualize what we mean by a ‘problem’, has an impact on how we face the problems we encounter in daily life. Is a problem merely given, or does it have to be created? I apply this philosophical analysis of a concept, to the pandemic state of exception, which is an example of what I call a ‘tyranny of problems.’
‘As much appearance, as little problem’: Ending my investigations on the concept of a problem, I take a phenomenological route of inquiry. If we take phenomenology to be first philosophy, then there is no more primal truth, than that all that is, is appearance. As both Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology claim, ‘as much appearance, as much being.’ Everything that is, is in the same manner, as appearance. Leading phenomenology to claim that all appearing appears in the same manner. But is this truly so? We look at what we call a ‘problem’, both as that which we encounter, and as what we consequently posit, to see how the problem appears. Does the problem truly appear in the same manner as all other appearing?
For more information on the book, see my post in which I announced it:
Sources:
Rufus, Musonius. Lectures and Sayings. Translated with an introduction by Cynthia King. 2011.
Aristotle. The Complete Works: Volume Two. Edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Complete Works: Ecce Homo. Edited by Oscar Levy, translated by Anthony M. Ludovici. New York: Macmillan, 1911.