THE PURSUIT OF TRUTH.
Sir,-In your issue for October 24, your reviewer has used Dr, Raphael’s book, The Moral Sense, as a peg on which to hang his private reflections on what he calls "the noble, scholarly and disinterested pursuit of truth." He sums up these reflections in the curt sentence: "No truth is disinterested." ; Now, if a man tells me. that the pursuit of truth is never disinterested, I think I know what he means, though I don’t entirely agree with it. But when a man says "No truth is disinteyested," I find it hard to believe that he
can mean anything at all. All the elucidation your reviewer condescends to offer consists of a couple of metaphors, in one of which Truth is compared to some sort of Scarlet Woman, and in another to a volcanic island. While these are very prettily done, they come a little strangely in the course of a diatribe against the esoteric style of professional philosophers. To use his own words, "I wish he would explain his explanation."
ARTHUR N.
PRIOR
(Canterbury College).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 439, 21 November 1947, Page 5
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180THE PURSUIT OF TRUTH. New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 439, 21 November 1947, Page 5
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