Monday, April 4, 2011
Journal 3
Is the truth subjective?
No one is omniscient in this world. No one knows the complete truth. So how does one define the truth? Is it the actual events that occurred, or what someone thought the actual events were. This is the real debate of the question.
In life, it has become a moral dilemma to always tell the truth. Regular people are considered “sinners,” unjust people if they lie. Parents punish children, schools kick students out of programs and churches hold confessions all for people who lie knowingly. And yet, what is there to say for capitalistic industries in America? Are they lying when the deceive millions of Americans each day? Or is that type of lie overlooked since it is making millions of dollars. What about someone or a company who actually tells the truth? How are they rewarded? These debates can be applied to the story of Huckleberry Finn.
In chapters 26 to 30, Huck encounters several situations in which he must choose to lie or tell the truth. He has to fake that he is a servant to the king, who is pretending to be an uncle to recently orphaned children in order to reap the inheritance of their lost father. He must keep the king’s plight and their identities sealed from the public in order to be able to keep traveling with the king. However, Huck’s pure soul cannot allow this to happen when he sees one of the girls crying. He promptly steals the inherited money from the king and hides it in the coffin of the dead man. He tells the truth to Mary, one of the orphaned girls, but then lies to others in order to make his plan work. Huck has the right ideals, and yet is still lying. That is where I don’t know what to think. Machiavelli would say that the end justifies the means, that the truth will prevail in the end—and that all the lies in between are insignificant. In a way, I must agree. Huck does tell the truth, but it is a subjective truth. He lies in order for the real events to be found by the general public. His intentions are truthful. In this way, truth is subjective. However, manipulation is not. The King and Duke do not intend to tell the truth to the townspeople in the end. Their lies are for manipulation, and therefore are not under the category of “subjective truth.”
¶ 7:24 PM
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