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2021 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

1. Introduction: From Clear Speaking to Misunderstanding

Author : David Riddle Watson

Published in: Truth to Post-Truth in American Detective Fiction

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

The work begins by discussing the 2016 election and comments concerning “post-truth,” “fake news,” and “alternative facts” to bring to the fore the central problem regarding truth and consensus that this project addresses. The introduction presents the current state of debate on the causes of the post-truth era, with scholars such as Lee McIntyre and popular writers like Michiko Kakutani faulting postmodern philosophy for creating a climate of relativism. Following the works of philosophers like Charles Taylor and Donald Davidson, I conversely suggest that “post-truth” is rooted in the belief that “reality” is located inside a subject’s mind and suggest this belief has been sustainable because of growing distrust in conventional sources of shared social meaning. I argue that this radically subjective model of truth can be successfully combatted by using a pragmatic model of intersubjectivity based on Davidson’s work. To illustrate these theories in action, I examine detective fiction of the last century. This approach proves fruitful, for, in each period analyzed (modern, postmodern, contemporary), the reader observes shifting assumptions about truth, world, and ontology.

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next chapter Closed Worlds and Cold Detectives

Heidegger explains,

In each case Dasein is mine to be in one way or another. Dasein has always made some sort of decision as to the way in which it is in each case mine. That entity which in its Being has this very Being as an issue, comports itself towards its Being as its ownmost possibility. In each case Dasein is its possibility, and it ‘has’ this possibility, but not just a property, as something present-at-hand would. And because Dasein is in each case essentially its own possibility, it can in its very Being, ‘choose’ itself and win itself; it can also lose itself and never win itself; or only ‘seem’ to do so. But only in so far as it is essentially something which can be authentic—that is, something of its own. (68)

It is notable that this is not the first time in recent history and that political discourse has been seen as doing violence to the concept of “truth.” In 2006, Merriam-Webster declared Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness” its word of the year.

In Erickson’s novel, the Twin Towers mysteriously reappear in the South Dakota badlands. However, everyone cannot see them. And for those who cannot see them, the towers literally are not there. The novel depicts a world where perception is reality, and the distance between realities is not bridgeable.

As well as Ontology as the foundation of empirical knowledge, as I argue in the conclusion, is our being-in-the-world.

In no way will this become an argument where the solution is to return to “Enlightenment Rationalism,” nor should it be thought that people in the eighteenth century were all walking around acting sensibly and only today have people become confused about concept of truth.

While this origin, as all origins, can be contested, I mean this in the sense Alfred North Whitehead did when he declared philosophy to be a footnote to Plato. Whitehead writes, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” (Process and Reality 39).

Nietzsche makes a similar point in On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense that people, in general, do not mind the lie if the effects are positive.

Heidegger writes, “With the ‘cogito sum’ Descartes had claimed that he was putting philosophy on a new and firm footing. But what he left undetermined when he began in this ‘radical’ way, was the kind of Being which belongs to the res cogitans, or—more precisely—the meaning of the Being of the ‘sum.’ That is to say, Descartes’ failure, which was taken over by Kant, was that he “failed to provide an ontology of Dasein” as being-in-the-world” (46).

Donald Trump was consistently referred to as a Manchurian Candidate with the idea being that Russia could secretly be dictating American policy from Moscow.

Traditionally metaphysics does this by its onto-theo-logic nature, meaning that it attempts to interpretant existence in terms of an existent. For example, interpreting existence through Jesus in Christianity, History in Hegel, Economics in Marx, childhood in Freud. In each case all facets of existence are reduced to one “real” cause.

Heidegger’s term meant to show that humans are always-already in the world primordially before the world can become an object of reflection. In using this term, Heidegger attempts to bypass the dualities that arise from distinctions such as mind versus body and self versus world.

Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Vintage, 2018.

Flood, Alyson. “‘Post-truth’ named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries.” The Guardian. 15 Nov 2016.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. Macquarrie and Robinson. Harper, 2008.

———. Introduction to Metaphysics. Trans. Ralph Manheim. Yale UP, 1987.

Pierce, Charles. “The Fixation of Belief.” Pragmatism: A Reader. Ed. Menand. Vintage, 1997. pp. 7–25.

Sapir, E. “The Status of Linguistics as a Science.” Language, vol. 5, no. 4, 1929, pp. 207–214. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/409588.

Whitehead, Alfred N. Process and Reality. The Free Press, 1978.

Title: Introduction: From Clear Speaking to Misunderstanding
Author: David Riddle Watson
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Truth to Post-Truth in American Detective Fiction
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-87073-7

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-87074-4

Copyright Year: 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87074-4_1