True, The Sincerity And Politics

The relationship between truth, truthfulness and politics is one of the most concerned topics in political philosophy, which can be discussed from different perspectives. Based on Bernard Williams’work Truth & Truthfulness, this paper will focus on this problem:In the liberal complex, whether truthfulness has intrinsic value for politics.The main content of this paper is divided into three parts. In the first part, we will analyze the basic concepts truth and truthfulness, dicussing their translation, meaning and relation to other concepts. Truthfulness can be translated to Zhencheng. It’s a virtue concerning to truth, which can refer to both Sincerity and Accuracy. The task of the second part will interpret the text. After the interpretation of the chapter nine of Truth & Truthfulness, this paper will show Williams’discussion of the problem of the relationship between truth, truthfulness and politics. Williams explores the instrinsic value of truthfulness associated with other values in liberal societies:On the one hand, following analysis of liberty and democratic lesitimacy, he identifies a tension, the liberal and democratic sociey isn’t necessarily helpful to truthfulness and the spread of the truth. On the other hand, truthfulness, which is indispensable to a certain kind of critique to unjustice, is one of liberalism’s most powerful weapons. In the third part, we will discuss education as the duty of government, which is an appropriate extension, from political values to political practices. We will divide the education into four types and focus on the difference between the instilling education and the reasoning education, both of which are concerned with values, by means of the Reflective Criticism put forward by Williams, and then we will find the value of truthfulness in the reasoning education.All the arguments of this paper depend on an important premis that Williams breaks the hedge of traditional discussion of intrinsic value. Instrinsic value is regarded as an oppositons to instrumental value in tradition, while it is valued only to relate to other values that we value according to Williams. It is such a position, as we expand a new vision and open up a new world.