Blackwell Reference Online

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Searching for the meaning of “truth” in the Chinese tradition would not immediately strike one as a controversial activity. The signal prominence of the quest for truth in shaping the sensibility of Anglo-European culture might easily suggest that the notion has had a similar import in China. But the fact of the matter is that scholars from China, Europe, and America continue to debate the question as to whether there is even anything like a concept of “truth” in China. On the surface, the claim that the Chinese have no concept of truth appears outrageous – surely the Chinese tell the truth as often as we, and lie as often. Even granting that this is the case, it turns out, nonetheless, that the issue is not as easily settled as one might think.One thing is certain: we in the West are well-nigh obsessed with the notion of truth. The sibling values of “truth” and “rightness” have dominated the cultures of Western modernity. Other values, such as aesthetic beauty, or religious holiness, or philosophical importance have been clearly less significant. So much is this so that we are more likely to wonder whether it is true that x is beautiful than to consider the beauty of x in itself. And many of us will allow our interest in the rightness of something beautiful, construed in terms of its moral effects, to overrule any nascent aesthetic interest.From Plato's discussion of the analogy ... log in or subscribe to read full text