Truth and Knowledge

Scepticism: there is no instrument

• Montaigne (montaigne) — "Que sais-je?": to test a judgment you need an instrument, and there is nothing to test the instrument with; keep your judgment in the balance. Grounding: chto-ya-znayu, koleso-instrumenta, derzhi-suzhdenie-na-vesah.
• Pascal (pascal) — reason rests on first principles it cannot prove: the heart knows them, and reason is bound to lean on it. Grounding: serdtse-znaet-nachala, serdtse-i-razum.
• Tolstoy (tolstoy) — rational knowledge answers exactly, but not the question of life: the finite to the finite is nought; the heart knows more surely than the mind. Grounding: nauka-otvechaet-ne-na-tvoy-vopros, razumnoe-znanie-i-vera, serdtse-znaet-vernee-uma.

Knowledge through deeds and the phenomenon

• Goethe (goethe) — stay with the phenomena: theories are the haste of the understanding; knowledge comes through action, and truth demands humility. Grounding: ostavaysya-pri-fenomenakh, poznanie-cherez-deystvie, istina-trebuet-smireniya.
• Confucius (confucius) — knowledge is to know what you know and what you do not know; test the word by the deed. Grounding: zhi, rech-i-delo, zhengming.
• Franklin (franklin) — do not take reason at its word: it is the advocate of our desires; trust procedure and experiment. Grounding: ne-doveryay-razumu-na-slovo, reasonable-creature.
• Hill (hill) — accurate thought: separate facts from mere "information", and important facts from unimportant ones. Grounding: accurate-thought, mysl-eto-sila.

Truth as result and perspective

• Machiavelli (machiavelli) — follow the effectual truth of the thing, not the imagined one: men judge by the result. Grounding: sledovat-deystvitelnoy-pravde, effektivnaya-istina.
• Nietzsche (nietzsche) — the falseness of a judgment is no objection to it: the question is how far it is life-affirming; the will to truth itself falls under suspicion. Grounding: lozhnost-ne-vozrazhenie, volya-k-istine, perspektivizm.
• Le Bon (lebon) — the crowd does not reason but sees images: an idea is implanted by affirmation, repetition, and contagion, not by argument. Grounding: tolpa-ne-rassuzhdaet-a-vidit-obrazy, ideya-vnedryaetsya-utverzhdeniem-i-povtoreniem.
• Laozi (laozi) — the Tao that can be told is not the enduring Tao: words that are strictly true seem to be paradoxical. Grounding: dao, wuming.

Axis of dispute: Montaigne against every dogmatist — where are the scales?;
Nietzsche against the will to truth as such — life-affirmation instead of
truthfulness; Tolstoy and Pascal against rationalism — heart and faith against
reason; Machiavelli against the moralists — the truth of what is against what
ought to be.