Annibale Carracci, An allegory of Truth and Time, 1584
For it is necessary to learn … at the same time the falsehood and truth of the whole of being.
Plato, Seventh Letter
By leading him astray, errancy dominates man through and through. But, as leading astray, errancy at the same time contributes to a possibility that man is capable of drawing up from his ek-sistence — the possibility that, by experiencing errancy itself and by not mistaking the mystery of Da-sein, he not let himself be led astray.
Martin Heidegger, On the Essence of Truth, 1943
At the limit, life . . . is what is capable of error. . . . With man, life reaches a living being who is never altogether in his place, a living being who is fated “to err” and “to be mistaken”.
Michel Foucault, “Life: Experience and Science,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, January-March, 1985.
The sophist credo, expressed in Protagoras’ statement, “Of all things the measure is Man, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not”, reduces what is to what is knowable or cognisable, with the only limits on the latter being other cognitions. In other words, we are confined to a world of beliefs, opinions, or what the ancient Greek philosophers called doxa, and thereby separated from truth.
Truth, by contrast, concerns the being of what is, the experience that something is, that there is something rather than nothing, which is ultimately mysterious, that is, not reducible to what is “known”.
If the truth makes possible what is knowable, it is not itself what is knowable. It is that which makes possible “knowledge” of particular beings, but the latter may always be the object of differing opinions.
The truth keeps the latter at bay, as not the final word about what is or is not. It pulls us away from the hubris of unquestionable and unlimited knowledge; it holds in check the illusions of a sovereign knower capable of sovereign action in the world; it renders possible other potential ways of being in the world.
The Truth and opinion
Giorgio Agamben
The age-old problem of the relationship between truth and opinion, first set out at the dawn of Western philosophy in Parmenides’ poem, has taken on new relevance today. It is, in fact, evident that the clear distinction between these two forms of knowledge—which was self-evident to the ancients—has now been completely erased. There are only opinions that claim to be truths. It is therefore all the more urgent to recall that truth and opinions lie on two distinct planes. Truth —which the Greeks called aletheia, meaning “non-concealment” or “openness”— concerns being, that is, the experience that something is, that there is something rather than nothing. Opinion (which the Greeks called —and we still call today— doxa) concerns entities, the knowledge that things are in a certain way rather than another. The former, says Parmenides, is immovable (atremes, meaning “unshaken”, “unfaltering”), circular and outside of time; the latter may be correct or erroneous and is, therefore, changeable and uncertain.
It is, however, crucial to understand the relationship between these two forms of human knowledge. The former in no way guarantees the correctness of opinions, but it provides us with a vantage point from which to consider them, where we can ask ourselves whether they are right or wrong. Those who rely solely on opinion, by contrast, will inevitably tend to regard it as correct. Whilst truth reveals the possibility of both true and false opinions, opinion can only assert its own truth. Hence the apparent paradox, according to which truth is defined through the possibility of error, which opinion must exclude at all costs.
It is hardly surprising that a culture which has lost sight of the distinction between truth and opinion has produced artificial intelligence—that is to say, a doxa which asserts its own truth without being able to experience it. Where this doxa, which has closed itself off to the possibility of error, will lead those who believe they are making use of it is a question we should not fail to ask ourselves.
Giorgio Agamben: Truth and opinion
For it is necessary to learn … at the same time the falsehood and truth of the whole of being.
Plato, Seventh Letter
By leading him astray, errancy dominates man through and through. But, as leading astray, errancy at the same time contributes to a possibility that man is capable of drawing up from his ek-sistence — the possibility that, by experiencing errancy itself and by not mistaking the mystery of Da-sein, he not let himself be led astray.
Martin Heidegger, On the Essence of Truth, 1943
At the limit, life . . . is what is capable of error. . . . With man, life reaches a living being who is never altogether in his place, a living being who is fated “to err” and “to be mistaken”.
Michel Foucault, “Life: Experience and Science,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, January-March, 1985.
The sophist credo, expressed in Protagoras’ statement, “Of all things the measure is Man, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not”, reduces what is to what is knowable or cognisable, with the only limits on the latter being other cognitions. In other words, we are confined to a world of beliefs, opinions, or what the ancient Greek philosophers called doxa, and thereby separated from truth.
Truth, by contrast, concerns the being of what is, the experience that something is, that there is something rather than nothing, which is ultimately mysterious, that is, not reducible to what is “known”.
If the truth makes possible what is knowable, it is not itself what is knowable. It is that which makes possible “knowledge” of particular beings, but the latter may always be the object of differing opinions.
The truth keeps the latter at bay, as not the final word about what is or is not. It pulls us away from the hubris of unquestionable and unlimited knowledge; it holds in check the illusions of a sovereign knower capable of sovereign action in the world; it renders possible other potential ways of being in the world.
The Truth and opinion
Giorgio Agamben
The age-old problem of the relationship between truth and opinion, first set out at the dawn of Western philosophy in Parmenides’ poem, has taken on new relevance today. It is, in fact, evident that the clear distinction between these two forms of knowledge—which was self-evident to the ancients—has now been completely erased. There are only opinions that claim to be truths. It is therefore all the more urgent to recall that truth and opinions lie on two distinct planes. Truth —which the Greeks called aletheia, meaning “non-concealment” or “openness”— concerns being, that is, the experience that something is, that there is something rather than nothing. Opinion (which the Greeks called —and we still call today— doxa) concerns entities, the knowledge that things are in a certain way rather than another. The former, says Parmenides, is immovable (atremes, meaning “unshaken”, “unfaltering”), circular and outside of time; the latter may be correct or erroneous and is, therefore, changeable and uncertain.
It is, however, crucial to understand the relationship between these two forms of human knowledge. The former in no way guarantees the correctness of opinions, but it provides us with a vantage point from which to consider them, where we can ask ourselves whether they are right or wrong. Those who rely solely on opinion, by contrast, will inevitably tend to regard it as correct. Whilst truth reveals the possibility of both true and false opinions, opinion can only assert its own truth. Hence the apparent paradox, according to which truth is defined through the possibility of error, which opinion must exclude at all costs.
It is hardly surprising that a culture which has lost sight of the distinction between truth and opinion has produced artificial intelligence—that is to say, a doxa which asserts its own truth without being able to experience it. Where this doxa, which has closed itself off to the possibility of error, will lead those who believe they are making use of it is a question we should not fail to ask ourselves.
Quodlibet, July 13, 2026