The Great Books and the pursuit of truth
Are they compatible?
A few years back, while I was presenting on the topic of viewpoint diversity in high school classrooms, a participant of the workshop raised the issue of the tension between viewpoint diversity and the pursuit of truth. He asked: Does the presence of diverse points of view lead to finding the truth or are diverse views encouraged for the sake of having diverse perspectives represented? I thought this was a great question. Do teachers who encourage students to share divergent views do so to ensure all students feel the perspective they are presenting is worthy of sharing and that they have a place in classroom conversations? Or is viewpoint diversity encouraged with the goal of eventually reaching a conclusion on the matter at hand, thereby arriving at the truth?
John Stuart Mill was one of the greatest advocates for viewpoint diversity. He believed that people should be free to express their views and exposed to the opinions of others for three reasons:
“The opinion may possibly be true.”
“He who knows only his side of the case, knows little of that.”
“Conflicting doctrines share the truth between them.”
Mill was after the truth. He believed that all should hear new or divergent views because they might very well be true; that all should study views opposed to their own, not just to understand the point of view, but to be assured that their own view is correct; and that the tension between divergent viewpoints leads to the truth, not necessarily because one point of view is true and the other false, but because each side holds a piece of the truth, which is illuminated as a result of the tension.
Mill’s essay, On Liberty, is among the Great Books of the Western World. He is a part of the Great Conversation about the Great Ideas that have shaped Western civilization.