Book Notes

Truth and Historicity, Richard Campbell, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1992) In his historically sensitive philosophizing, Campbell explores the preconditions of a conception of truth within the broader horizon of the cont ingency, cul tural relativity, and his tor ic i ty (Geschichtlichkeit) of all human understanding, grounded in the life- world rather than harkening back to the absolute, eternal verities of the Platonic conception, or Augustinian identities. Such a 'truth' would find its telos in fulfilment or action rather than in linguistic correctness or correspondence. While this has echoes in the Heideggerian notion of aletheia,with its connotations of revelation or unconcealment, its closest analogue is in the Hebrew notions of trust and faithfulness. In the final chapters Campbell draws to- gether Hegelian and post-Enlightenment critical thinking on truth, passing through the pragmatism of Dewey and communicative ethic of Habermas, and nominating speech-acts, rather than state- ments or assertoric sentences, as the primary locus of truth. This is a good example of the new frontiers into which phenomenological with overtures to theology is heading in Australia.

Purushottama Bilimoria

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