Dynamic concept of "truth"

Question

I've recently read a book in which a certain sentence sparked a question in my mind:

"the Platonic philosophy is a search for truth, the certain truth. Such truth... is necessarily static" (emphasis mine)

This popped a question to my head - is there a concept of "truth" (as in, objective metaphysical truth) that thinks of it as a dynamic idea rather than static, an ideal. Of course, I do not mean subjective truth, as it is obviously dynamic, but rather an objective truth that talks about a changing world, a "dynamic theory of forms"/"theory of dynamic forms" so to speak. Has anyone proposed such theory?

Answer 1

As has been mentioned Peirce would be very relevant. Check out his semiotics of 'First, Second and Third' and how it relates to the Holy Trinity. An expensive book by Andrew Robinson God and the World of Signs: Trinity, Evolution, and the Metaphysical Semiotics of C. S. Peirce is the best I've read on this topic. The 'First' would probably be your static truth.

I don't quite understand the idea of a 'theory of dynamic forms' in connection with truth. A theory is not truth and a knowledge of truth would have to be in part a knowledge of dynamic forms.

I know of no theory for which absolute or upper-case Truth is not static. The idea doesn't seem to make sense.

Answer 2

Christians form their theoretical framework around truth in verses like this one:

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life." -Jesus

Having truth anchored in reference to a person, rather than any other thing (such as a definition, a framework, a philosophy, a principle, a society, an agreement, etc.) would guarantee that the truth remains as dynamic as the unfolding of reality as time passes.

I guess that this kind of a basis for truth is not objective, since it refers to a person, Jesus. But it is universal with regards to all of us, since the person anchoring truth is the same person no matter which one of us is contemplating truth.

Answer 3

Short answer: Yes, by many philosophers!

I will try to provide a short (and obviously not exhaustive) intellectual history of such theories.

One of the first modern authors who elaborated on the punchline of Hegel that knowledge is necessarily historical was Wilhelm Dilthey with his philosophy of life (1883). He basically was the first author explicitly writing about historical a priori (a term not used by him and nailed decades later by Foucault in his Archaeology of Knowledge, 1969). His work has been systematically applied by Georg Misch in his Lebensphilosophie und Phänomenologie. Eine Auseinandersetzung der Diltheyschen Richtung mit Heidegger und Husserl, Leipzig 1930 (3. Aufl. Stuttgart 1964). Dilthey's work was very influential in intellectual circles in Germany and ended up in hermeneutical writings by e.g. Ernst Cassirer (Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, 1923-29), Helmuth Plessner (The Levels of the Organic and the Human, 1928), Heidegger (Being and Time, 1927), and Gadamer (Truth and Method, 1960), all of which bind human understanding to dynamic cultural development, both phylogenetically (individual life, single generation) and ontogenetically (over the course of history).

While Dilthey was among the first, there is another huge tradition in modern philosophy that purported dynamic concepts of truth and ultimately ended up in postmodernism: Classical pragmatism. Starting from Peirce (1878/79), continuing with Wiliam James' pluralistic universe (1909) and Dewey's concept of "experience" (Experience and Nature, 1928), they all have in common that meaning and truth are dependent on the particular pragmatic context and experience of individual life-worlds (even if all of them have idealistic tendencies in some writings).

This ultimately led to late Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations, 1953) and all the traditions starting from there (see e.g. Rorty vs. Putnam!). For some essays regarding this, see Mike Sandbothe & William Egginton (eds.) (2004): The pragmatic turn in philosophy: Contemporary engagements between analytic and continental thought. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Another quite famous and influential intellectual line came from Marx/Engels (rejecting the idealistic drive of Hegel) to Horkheimer and Adorno (Frankfurt School) with their Negative Dialectics, 1966 (acknowledging the materialistic dialictics, rejecting the absolute outcome). From there, Habermas (Theory of Communicative Action, 1981) and Honneth (The Struggle for Recognition, 1992) are the main successors.

Bergson and Whitehead are rightly mentioned as contemporaries outside of any particular tradition as well by @Conifold in his comment to the question. They have influences everywhere.

Interestingly, all authors mentioned were quite fond of Hegel's basic insights, with a tendency to condemn him because of the Absolute.

Therefore, if you like, aspects of Hegel's work (the Owl of Minerva...) set off an anti-idealistic concept of dynamic truth in many contemporary traditions. And they are still chewing on the problems this brings for an evaluation of sciences and philosophy.

Answer 4

Do you not elude to the answer in the question? By association? A dynamic truth could be What was said by Socrates, “I am the wisest man alive in that i know one thing, that I know nothing”. Sure this is a static truth but it is also a dynamic one, in which all things known over time are not static. And perhaps this is true of all of us going through life in that what we begin knowing, and being sure of, becomes either irrelevant or even completely false as we age and experience the wonder of life.

Philosophy itself really is a dynamic truth in that what is considered axioms of logic might not apply as easily in this new world we are evolving in. And every generation not only reapplies what has been learned but uses historiography to relate the past to the present. And by doing this the truth becomes a living concept.

But I do want to add one other aspect, that truth to me really is only a static understanding in relevance to the subject of the question. And that truth to me is a simple understanding that requires little argument. And perhaps only a “sophist” might need to manipulate such truths as it applies to their arguments.