The Liar's Tale: A History of Falsehood

This is a great exposure of a simple premise -- that honesty and the truth are what people want and they should be encouraged. This premise underlies popular folklore as well as religious teachings. Yet the author leads us into the thick of how full human nature is of lieing, even for a while contemplating the idea that the ability to lie is what actually makes us human. It is that fundamental (except for autistic children who do not have the ability to lie, often until they are teenagers). We all "slant" the facts, speak "diplomatically" to others, utter only "appropriate" comments. We have a whole vocabulary of names of types of lies that offer explanations of our motives for lieing, so pervasive are untruths. So much of our social activity is aimed at influencing the group, by putting ourselves in the other person's shoes, we spin our tales to nudge others into behaving as we wish them to. This is a primary purpose of human social interaction. Once we are able to predict how others will react to what we say, we begin to change our utterances in order to influence them. We "lie". The book is full of examples of great thinkers' struggles with these dilemas. A great eye opener. Fascinating.

Perched at the climax of the Gospel of John is a scene in which Pilate interrogates Jesus with the question: "What is truth?" The moment gains added power in the biblical text because while Pilate meant the question rhetorically, the gospel tacitly takes the position that the answer to that question would have been obvious to someone who had actually been paying attention. In this way, the gospel makes a point, among others to be sure, that truth is in the eye of the beholder. And just how reliable are our eyes anyway? It is an ironic coincidence that the eye has been a much debated battleground in the evolution debate. Far from being a stream lined organ that unerringly serves its purpose, Darwin among others noted the ad hoc nature of the eye, bearing the imprint of its many evolutionary twists and turns to make it the organ it is today. However, even being the organ it is today, we still can only observe but a small section of the spectrum of available light. We can only see what we can see and by extension perhaps we can only see the truth we can see. I think this book is important reading because it compares deceit in human interactions to deceit occuring in nature. Despite millenia of moral codes extolling the virtues of honesty and candor, the fact remains that deceit plays an important role in human interactions. What is the difference between a dangerous predator feigning death to draw its prey closer and an office rival feigning friendship to draw incriminating confidences from an opponent? That the sole distinction seems to lie in the spoken nature of the activity may indicate the only part of the transaction that is uniquely human.

I loved this book. Thankfully it's also quite serious and clearly written. If you think telling the truth is simple, reconsider. Campbell's book takes us through 2,500 years of analysis of a seemingly simple problem, beginning of course with the ancient Greeks and ending on today's scientist's bench. Much of the identification of the human concept of truth doesn't necessarily begin with Free Will but lies both in the natural structure of language and evolution. I was surprised to find how near 19th Century German philosophers came to identifying present day evolutionary psychology.

This is a very enjoyable read. Jeremy Campbell gives us a light, but well-informed, history of western philosophy. He chronicles the search for truth that has persevered throughout the ages, while demonstrating that the human animal has been employing deception (both intentionally and unintentionally) for just as long.The story begins with the early Greek sophists, who correctly intuited that truth in language can be highly malleable. Plato's subsequent Idealism, and much of the western philosophic tradition, was a vain effort to ground and locate absolute truth within the context of language. Campbell's story comes full circle with Wittgenstein's description of the language-game, in which it is recognized that "absolute truth" cannot be located within the imperfect convention of language.Campbell's story is filled with entertaining anecdotes, such as the elderly Kant's "white lie", in apparent conflict with his categorical imperative. Campbell eventually arrives at the modern deconstructionists (Derrida, Foucault, and followers), who take Wittgenstein's insight (no "objective", or "absolute" truth within language) and try to disingenuously derive from it the conclusion that all standards of veracity (rules of the language game) are chimera, and, therefore, anything goes, and each individual's interpretation of a single narrative is singularly valid and cannot be evaluated against another's.Campbell exposes the intellectual bankruptcy of these modern Liars, and even makes reference to Alan Sokal's ploy in the journal Social Text, in which it was demonstrated that, although the journal's editors were, themselves, habitual Liars, they were incapable of discerning Mr. Sokal's blatant, but brilliant, Lies. (I highly recommend Sokal's book, Fashionable Nonsense. No one could possibly undress and expose intellectual charlatanism in a more entertaining or satisfying fashion than Sokal did, through his first essay (the hoax), the second essay (exposure of the hoax), and the book. Stanley Fish- are you out there?)Anyway, Mr. Campbell gives an excellent tour of the western philosophic tradition, with a unique emphasis on the role of deception throughout human history and culture.

First off, the title of this book, THE LIAR'S TALE, is a lie!Maybe this "cover lie" was intentional on Jeremy Campbell's part (more likely it was the marketing director at Norton publishing who realized that a book entitled THE LIAR'S TALE would move more copies than a book called THE HUMAN HUNT FOR TRUTHFUL MEANING). If it was a purposeful lie, it is consistent with Campbell's core thesis: we human beings are far more concerned with finding and creating meaning for ourselves than we are in discovering factual truth.This book WILL challenge your thinking and stretch your vocabulary. But know this--it's actually a book about philosophy and philosophers. That's a good thing. That's a rare thing these days. Richard Tarnas does it bigger and better in his book PASSION OF THE WESTERN MIND. Tarnas attempts more and achieves more with his work. Campbell, though less ambitious, succeeds too. He focuses on language as much as ideas. If you are wanting to read a meaningful book about meaning, you'll mean to read this book. I'm not trying to be mean to you. I just know what this book could mean for you. Know what I mean?