Degrees of Truth
This chapter examines the classical philosophical binaries of truths and lies, philosophy and sophistry. These binaries overstate their case and in their stead, thinking about degrees of truth rather than truths and lies or truth and post-truth obviates p
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The Specter of Hypocrisy “When Mark Twain proposed that ‘[a] lie can travel half-way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes,’ he could never have contemplated the internet age that has rendered discourse unmediated and unrestricted by the boundaries of space and time. Raphael Sassower’s timely reflection on the manifold complexity of hypocrisy could not be more necessary. This carefully constructed argument’s consideration of the implication of falsehoods across multiple registers of life is required reading.” —Michael E. Sawyer, Colorado College, USA, and author of Black Minded: The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X (2020) “In our age of ‘phony news’ and of the ‘post-factual’, Raphael Sassower’s new intervention is timely. In this book, he takes on the notion of hypocrisy as a way not only to challenge the current political scene, but more importantly and with more long-lasting reverberations, he challenges the borders of moral philosophy themselves. The relationship between the moral and the hypocritical are here explored, most interestingly between the Greek actor and the Hebrew chameleon.” —Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg, Director of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women and Professor of Italian Studies and Comparative Literature, Brown University, USA “Professor Sassower’s The Specter of Hypocrisy invites the reader to an intellectual celebration. It presents the triumph of humane reasoning over its cynic pretender. It is the most incisive study of one of the most disturbing psychosocial phenomena of our post-truth Trumpian times. Sassower portrays the sad picture of our current human condition as it appears on a global canvas writ large by the American colossal failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A wake up call it should be, Sassower says, or else. A society that has lost its compass, one that mixes truth and fallacy, hypocrisy and integrity, irrevocably loses touch with reality and destroys its own social matrix. The remedy he offers is a strong and hard one to swallow. It cuts through all intellectual polarities serving the cultural myths that populate our social, psychological, religious and political theories and practices. Sassower’s analysis of the problem situation is a tour de force. His mastery and depth of research into psychological, psychoanalytic, social, moral, philosophical, and religious theories that pertain to his subject matter is breathtaking. Sassower’s style verges, at times, on the poetic and exceptionally transpires both humane compassion and philosophical modesty. To mend our world, he says,
it is all about truth and truth telling—of friends to one another out of caring about integrity and social bonds. No more posturing as friends, but owning up to one’s friendship. Sassower offers us a new intellectual framework allowing degrees of hypocrisy and their empathic truthful discussion. This way we may go on searching for socially astute manipulative self-presentations without giving up on our commitment to the honest quest for ever-improving levels
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