The Courage of Truth

Courage

Who among us has the courage to utter the unspeakable? This type of courage is what is most necessary in free human beings.  The person who possesses this type of courage is the only human being who can claim to be honest.  Knowing what any group defines as the unspeakable is a major key to that group’s motives and nature.  We should always ask ourselves, what is it not possible to articulate within their way of speaking?

foucault

It is often regarded as cruelty to perform the act of speaking the unspeakable.  However this is one case where cruelty should have  positive connotations because cruelty contains an element of fearlessness which is foregrounded in this act.  Thus, there is the English expression regarding the cruelty of some truths.  The articulation of the unspeakable is often the result of a pitiless evaluation, a ruthless evaluation, an evaluation that does not judge in terms of good and evil.  This should be contrasted with the Kantian critique, the critique that justifies its object,  whose axiom is that one should begin by believing  in that which one criticizes. 

Consider a person who walks into a shopping mall and says, “the necessity of work is a myth that is used to enslave us” or the scene in I Heart Hukabees where the fireman character states that Jesus can in fact be mad at someone who believes in him, that faith is not enough.  Another example would be the case of Dr. Wilhelm Reich, and the persecution that he endured for bringing out the connections between politics and sexuality.  What do all of these people have in common? They all have the courage to articulate that which a certain situation is configured to hide. As Hegel put it, “The courage of truth…is the first condition of philosophising.”

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