noun
- the quality or state of being true."he had to accept the truth of her accusation"
synonyms: veracity, truthfulness, verity, sincerity, candour, honesty, genuineness;
- that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality.noun: the truth"tell me the truth"
synonyms: the fact of the matter, what actually/really happened, the case, so;
- a fact or belief that is accepted as true.plural noun: truths"the emergence of scientific truths"
synonyms: fact, verity, certainty, certitude;
Truth, they say, is a perspective, just like falsehood. Truth is the absence of falsehood, just like light is the absence of darkness, they say. I am not very comfortable with that analogy though. While light has been known* to be a thing, a wave, a particle, something that moves, something that has an identity and structure, one cannot say the same for darkness. Darkness is a concept and hence cannot be the same as absence of light. However, in our example, both truth and falsehood are concepts! There is nothing tangible about either of them.
Truth is often regarded as a "fact" or a "belief" that has been "accepted" as true. Now that is an extremely loaded definition. It weighs both facts and beliefs on the same scale. Lets for once not even try to understand the complexity of what a "fact" means. Then, what are these "beliefs" that we are talking about? And what does it mean for these to be "accepted" as true? I can choose to believe anything I want and I can choose to accept anything as well. Is Truth then just a mirror of one's personal philosophy?
Yes. Truth is not absolute. It is not a religion, not a dogma, not a science. Truth is a concept - a very personal one.