Abstract

In the universal history of philosophy it is perhaps impossible to find a definition of truth which has not, to some extent, already been formulated by the philosophers of Ancient Greece. Conversely, however, it is also certain that the universal history of philosophy, in essence, simply consists in a permanent force of human thought, directed at certain times and from certain viewpoints at a redefinition of the nature and essence of truth. By virtue of this, we shall address ourselves to this theme; we shall explore four conceptions of truth which appear to us to be representative and the most relevant in the context of an original philosophical culture, such as was the culture of Greece during the classical period. In this cultural context various concepts of truth will evolve; we shall call them ontological-existential, epistemological, logical (with specifications pertinent to this area) and pragmatic. At the same time we shall attempt to consider the degree to which each one of these concepts appears in other cultural contexts, with the emphasis and bias which they receive in a specific sense from the sensibility proper to these other cultures—Eastern and Western in the various periods—; the object being to indicate the common and distinctive features of their conceptions.