Despite its subtitle, the book is less a history of falsehood than of the concept of truth, with falsehood as an important corollary. Campbell's treatise suffers from a weak introduction that fails to set forth its plan, and from an unconvincing first two chapters on Darwin and the theme of nature as liar. After that, a methodical and enlightening march from antiquity to the present begins, analyzing notions of truth from pre-Socratics to postmodernists. The ancient Greek concept of the Logos, which guaranteed a fit between the human mind and the order of the universe, is effectively contrasted with the Sophists' denial of a "natural
fit between mind, language, and reality." Though the chapter on medieval thought is inadequate, Campbell handles modern thinkers gracefully, following rival theories of truth from Descartes, Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche to Freud, Moore, Russell, Saussure and Wittgenstein. The last few chapters spotlight postmodern thinkers (notably Barthes, Derrida, Foucault and Rorty) who have dismissed the distinction between truth and falsehood, promoting values such as pleasure and imagination while fostering the idea that "truth as well as falsehood are as dead as God." Campbell seems ambivalent toward the alleged death of truth: he appears equally unsatisfied by philosophical attempts to defend truth and with today's "almost unprecedented tolerance of falsehood." It would have been nice if Campbell had made his own position clearer. Even so, the book is a valuable account of how truth and falsehood got where they are today. (Aug.)
Forecast:While the back of the galley promises that this book "turns Sissela Bok's
Lying"—the classic walk-through on a variety of moral quandaries—"on its head," don't look for that book's displacement from the shelf. As a pointedly historical text, this book won't capture the imaginations of everyday readers (and liars), but may sell slowly and steadily as a solid popular account of some difficult thinkers.
