Abstract

In the opening line of his essay ‘On Truth’, Francis Bacon ticks off Pontius Pilate for not giving the subject its due time and gravity—‘“What is truth?”, said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.’ If Pilate had stayed for an answer, he would have been waiting a long time—four centuries after Bacon, and twenty after Christ, the jury is still out. But things do seem to have been moving along quite nicely, this past century or so; and as Pilate might note with satisfaction, he himself has been getting a better press. Perhaps Nietzsche’s extravagant compliment was a mixed blessing: Nietzsche declared (‘as offensively as possible’, as Will Durant [1929: 25] put it) that..