Truth

Truth, in its ordinary philosophical sense, is the property of statements or beliefs that agree with how things are. Philosophers have offered several theories of it: correspondence with reality, coherence among beliefs, usefulness in practice, as the pragmatists held, or disclosure, as in Heidegger’s reading of the Greek alētheia, “unconcealment”.

The contemplative traditions also use truth in a stronger sense, for reality itself. The Sanskrit satya, “truth”, comes from sat, “being”: what is true is what truly is. The Upaniṣads call Brahman “the truth of the truth”; in Islam, al-Ḥaqq, “the Real” or “the Truth”, is a name of God; in the Gospel of John, Christ says “I am the truth”. Truth in this sense is not only known but lived, and lying is a failure of being as well as of speech.

Buddhist philosophy distinguishes conventional truth, the way things appear and are spoken of, from ultimate truth, the way they are; the relation between the two is one of its central questions.