Abstract

Although a certain mature historicism in contemporary philosophy takes dialogue with past writers to be the “ultimate context within which knowledge is to be understood,” the problem of truth must persist for it—if only in the form of the question concerning the validity of interpretation. If there is no progress in philosophy toward a more precise and established body of true propositions, still there must be some sort of movement to conversation and some reference point by means of which the movement can be gauged. The reference point for traditional metaphysics is presence and presentation —both as method and as subject matter. But our goal now is simply to understand the special philosophical senses of truth and presence in their historical reality.