This blog is intended for those who have something to say, rather than those have to say something! Our subject is anything amenable to rational discourse…
ΖΗΤΩΜΕΝ ΤΗΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑΝ – Let’s seek the truth!
Our tagline (motto), ζητῶμεν τὴν ἀλήθειαν,[1] is Classical Greek for “Let’s seek the truth!”. It’s an exhortation and thus acknowledges that the quest for truth is both a free and a shared endeavour: In contrast, the widely-used Latin motto Quære verum (Seek the truth) is in the imperative[2], it is an order.
Why not just use English?
Q: Isn’t this all a bit pretentious – why not just use plain English?
A: Hey Oh! What you will – or whatever – it’s only a passing nod at the Hellenic basis of our civilization and the Greek pioneers of critical rational inquiry. Is any of this unclear or beyond understanding?
Regarding Parmenides…
Although we have only our thoughts, whether as opinions, conjectures or ‘fancies’ these alone should not be our end:
It matters not what men’s fancies are, ’tis the knowledge of things that is only to be prized.
John Locke. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690).
NOTES:
1. It recalls a characteristic of Pyrrhonian scepticism described in Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers (Book 9:70)—πάντοτε ζητεῖν τὴν ἀλήθειαν (Always seeking the truth). Our use of ἀλήθεια (aletheia) resembles that of the presocratic critical rationalist Parmenides and is to be clearly distinguished from the usages of Martin Heidegger or Michel Foucault et al.
2. But not in the original usage: in the Epistles of Horace* the phrase is descriptive – Scilicet ut vellem curvo dinoscere rectum atque inter silvas Academi quaerere verum (You may be sure that I was determined to distinguish the straight from the crooked, and to seek for truth in the groves of Academe).
* Horace Epistles, Bk. II, Epistle ii, line 44.