The Problem of Truth * [3]

The following considerations center on the problem of truth. They do not deal with the presuppositions that make possible both the extraction of this problem from the total context of the philosophical problematic and its special treatment. Nevertheless, one fundamental remark must be made: the problem of truth has its sense only within a context of problems, whereby the place it occupies within the series of these problems most decisively determines its content.—Thus the concept ‘truth’ is situated first of all in the general context of “knowledge.” Cognition aims at seizing upon a state of affairs. It is a peculiar relation between a seizing subject, consciousness, and the state of affairs seized upon, the object of cognition, the object. The structure of this cognitive relation points of itself to the concept of truth. Yet this structure is subject in turn to the most diverse possibilities of interpretation. Depending on the relationship that the members of the cognitive relation have to one another according to these interpretations, the concept of truth changes and the truth criteria that make up the proper ground of the problem of truth shift correspondingly. This should become clearer in what follows.