From Plato to Kant

The problem of truth

W. P. Esterhuyse

pp. 281-287

in: Lewis White Beck (ed), Proceedings of the Third international Kant congress, Berlin, Springer, 1972

Abstract

Since the emergence of the Greeks as a philosophical force, many a verbal battle has been fought in the field of philosophy on the problem of truth. However, despite the variety of knights-in-philosophical armour, defending one theory or another, the conflict between the correspondence and the coherence theories was certainly the most important. These two theories have cropped up regularly in one or another version in the course of the history of philosophy. The following discussion is focussed primarily on the correspondence theory since this theory formed the central nerve in the philosophical developments spanning the era between Plato and Kant. Special attention will be given to the questions: What are the terms of the relation of correspondence? What is the nature of the relation itself? The method will be problem-historical, an analysis of structural developments.

Cited authors

Kant Immanuel

Plato