There is no extrahistorical or eternalist or abstractivistically pure standpoint where we can get oriented in the absolute Truth per se before dealing with the concrete lineaments of how we happen exist in this time and place. We are participants in a dynamic system and we know its profile only by its action in organizing how we interact together and how we see our own selves. "The truth is the whole," and the whole is a system of living energy: our life as human and historical spirits.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that truth cannot be understood in isolation but is shaped by our experiences and interactions within a dynamic context.
Kenny Smith's quote conveys the idea that seeking truth requires engagement with the realities of our existence rather than looking for an abstract or universal perspective. It suggests that our understanding of truth is rooted in our experiences and how we relate to one another and our environment, presenting truth as a comprehensive system of interconnected experiences and energies that govern our lives as historical beings.
In practice
In a philosophy class discussing the nature of truth and reality.
He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his notice. August 10 was illegal, he says; so too was the taking of the Bastille. What account can we take of that, in revolution? It is the nature of revolutions to break laws. We are not justices of the peace; we are legislators to a new world.
There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.
I wanted pure love: foolishness; to love one another is to hate a common enemy: I will thus espouse your hatred. I wanted Good: nonsense; on this earth and in these times, Good and Bad are inseparable: I accept to be evil in order to become good.
In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.
Manners is the key thing. Say, for instance, when you're growing up, you're walking down the street, you've got to tell everybody good morning. Everybody. You can't pass one person.
In the old days, people used to risk their lives in India or in the Americas in order to bring back products which now seem to us to have been of comically little worth.
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